As much as I love the boost in interaction that comes with every Blaugust, I have realized that I am also perfectly content chatting away to the void. Longform writing (well, writing longer than a social media post or Discord message) is a skill, and every time I stop using that skill for any significant period, it atrophies. Now, I’m not saying I have any plans to ever go back to fiction writing, but I feel like there are many worse ways I could (and do, unfortunately) spend my time than dedicating a few hours a week to keeping myself sharp, as it were.

It also lets me dabble in media reviews (which has always interested me, but was never anything that occurred to me to pursue as a career), and gives me an outlet for the fun projects and personal challenges that I set up for myself for a completely artificial feeling of accomplishment when I do them.

I have nothing but respect for the folks who put active effort into increasing their readership and into driving engagement, but that’s not me at all, and because I definitely do not want to do those things, well, I have accepted that I will put posts into the world that absolutely no one will read. I did struggle with that for a bit, but eventually, I settled into the idea of I wrote them because I wanted to, not because I needed anyone else’s validation.