Austin Kleon shared Henrik Karlsson's "A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox." in one of his latest posts

A blog post is a search query. You write to find your tribe; you write so they will know what kind of fascinating things they should route to your inbox. If you follow common wisdom, you will cut exactly the things that will help you find these people. It is like the time someone told the composer Morton Feldman he should write for “the man in the street”. Feldman went over and looked out the window, and who did he see? Jackson Pollock.

...You will write essays that almost no one likes…. Luckily, almost no one multiplied by the entire population of the internet is plenty if you can only find them.

Kleon concludes that "This is really a great summary of the best thing that writing and sharing your work can do for you." Just as he outlines in moments through Show Your Work!

This is what drew me back to sharing online and firing up this blog. After reading Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, I had taken on a Luddite's mentality to putting things out online. I swore to only doing in person socializing and purely offline means of communication.

It was great in many ways! Our brains are really wired for the physical connections of a dinner date or playing in a community band.

But the internet is such an amazing medium for connecting with kindred spirits.

From the Neopets forums to sending an email after reading someone's blog post, our work connects us. One of the best reasons to practice any art is that it's a form of communication with others in an elevated craft. That is amplified by making that connection with people beyond our local tribe.

Having a means of genuine connection with a global community. How rad is that?

This blog hasn't been going long, but I've already made some great friends just by saying hello and keeping up with each other's posts on our blogs.

Added bonus for blogging in particular - It's insulated from likes, from performance metrics, and it's a glove that fits the hand of the artist, vs cramming them into a box.

Romanticised? Maybe. But I think it's pretty darn special!