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The hardest thing about writing a daily blog is not the actual writing part; it’s coming up with a new topic every single day. I’m often asked, “How long does it take you to write your posts?” And the truthful answer is that it varies greatly.
Part of this variability, of course, has to do with the length and depth of each post, but another big part of the variability is that I have to first land on a topic.
The usual criteria are that I’m looking for something that is roughly aligned with the topics covered on this blog, that is interesting to me (and where I can hopefully bring a unique perspective), and that I haven’t already written about over the last 12+ years. Another challenge is remembering what I have written about!
The two techniques that I have found most helpful in optimizing for the topic problem are to 1) keep a list of topics as they hit me (I do this in the to-do app on my phone) and 2) read the internet until I land on something that excites me.
Technique one is the most efficient because it means I’m more or less ready to go once I sit down to write. But I don’t always have topics on the list. It’s not easy having a daily writing practice. It’s a huge commitment that sometimes feels worth it and sometimes doesn’t.
That said, hard things tend to be the things you want to do in life. There’s probably also something to be said about the fact that the hardest part is the thing that AI isn’t good at.
Cover photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash
Some of you may remember that about a year ago I moved this blog onchain from WordPress to a platform called Paragraph. I've been happy with the move, though I know that my daily emails have been ending up in many of your junk boxes since then. Sorry. Hopefully that gets better over time. Given my enthusiasm for crypto, it just made sense to make the switch. I'm trying to move as much as I can onchain.
This blog is now also featured on Paragraph's homepage:
At the same time, things still feel very early. Paragraph, for example, has been experimenting with ways for writers to monetize their work. I don't care about that for this blog, but I am interested in seeing how the business models may evolve.
When I first started writing this daily blog back in August 2013, I was using Tumblr. I had already been using Tumblr to share random stuff, and so when I decided to venture into longer-form writing, I just adapted what I had already been using. Here's what I consider to be my first real blog post, which was over 11 years ago.
But then Tumblr got sold to Yahoo (and became generally less popular) and it started to feel like the wrong place for me to be writing about city building. So I packed up and moved over to Wordpress. Here's my last post on Tumblr, which was some 4 years ago.
Wordpress has been working out just fine for me, but the world is changing and the internet is starting to move from web2 to web3 platforms. So this week, I made the decision to once again pack up and move -- this time to Paragraph.xyz. I moved over all of my old posts, my email subscribers, and my domain (brandondonnelly.com).
A lot of you may not notice much of a difference. If you type in my domain, you'll find all of my old posts. And all new posts will continue to show up in your inbox every day (I don't think I can do a weekly digest with Paragraph, which was an option I had with Wordpress + Mailchimp). The important part, though, is that the backend is now completely different.
All of my posts are now stored on a blockchain called Arweave, which is a permanent and fully decentralized protocol. Meaning, if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, all of my writing would still live on forever, even if Paragraph goes bankrupt and shuts down. It is now also possible for readers to "collect" my posts just as they would an NFT.
I don't know how many people will actually do this and what utility it will serve today, but I think all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm a firm believer in crypto and blockchain technologies, and so it was time to walk the talk with my daily blog for city builders. Change is good. Welcome to brandondonnelly.com 3.0.
Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.
The hardest thing about writing a daily blog is not the actual writing part; it’s coming up with a new topic every single day. I’m often asked, “How long does it take you to write your posts?” And the truthful answer is that it varies greatly.
Part of this variability, of course, has to do with the length and depth of each post, but another big part of the variability is that I have to first land on a topic.
The usual criteria are that I’m looking for something that is roughly aligned with the topics covered on this blog, that is interesting to me (and where I can hopefully bring a unique perspective), and that I haven’t already written about over the last 12+ years. Another challenge is remembering what I have written about!
The two techniques that I have found most helpful in optimizing for the topic problem are to 1) keep a list of topics as they hit me (I do this in the to-do app on my phone) and 2) read the internet until I land on something that excites me.
Technique one is the most efficient because it means I’m more or less ready to go once I sit down to write. But I don’t always have topics on the list. It’s not easy having a daily writing practice. It’s a huge commitment that sometimes feels worth it and sometimes doesn’t.
That said, hard things tend to be the things you want to do in life. There’s probably also something to be said about the fact that the hardest part is the thing that AI isn’t good at.
Cover photo by Klim Musalimov on Unsplash
Some of you may remember that about a year ago I moved this blog onchain from WordPress to a platform called Paragraph. I've been happy with the move, though I know that my daily emails have been ending up in many of your junk boxes since then. Sorry. Hopefully that gets better over time. Given my enthusiasm for crypto, it just made sense to make the switch. I'm trying to move as much as I can onchain.
This blog is now also featured on Paragraph's homepage:
At the same time, things still feel very early. Paragraph, for example, has been experimenting with ways for writers to monetize their work. I don't care about that for this blog, but I am interested in seeing how the business models may evolve.
When I first started writing this daily blog back in August 2013, I was using Tumblr. I had already been using Tumblr to share random stuff, and so when I decided to venture into longer-form writing, I just adapted what I had already been using. Here's what I consider to be my first real blog post, which was over 11 years ago.
But then Tumblr got sold to Yahoo (and became generally less popular) and it started to feel like the wrong place for me to be writing about city building. So I packed up and moved over to Wordpress. Here's my last post on Tumblr, which was some 4 years ago.
Wordpress has been working out just fine for me, but the world is changing and the internet is starting to move from web2 to web3 platforms. So this week, I made the decision to once again pack up and move -- this time to Paragraph.xyz. I moved over all of my old posts, my email subscribers, and my domain (brandondonnelly.com).
A lot of you may not notice much of a difference. If you type in my domain, you'll find all of my old posts. And all new posts will continue to show up in your inbox every day (I don't think I can do a weekly digest with Paragraph, which was an option I had with Wordpress + Mailchimp). The important part, though, is that the backend is now completely different.
All of my posts are now stored on a blockchain called Arweave, which is a permanent and fully decentralized protocol. Meaning, if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, all of my writing would still live on forever, even if Paragraph goes bankrupt and shuts down. It is now also possible for readers to "collect" my posts just as they would an NFT.
I don't know how many people will actually do this and what utility it will serve today, but I think all of this is just the tip of the iceberg. I'm a firm believer in crypto and blockchain technologies, and so it was time to walk the talk with my daily blog for city builders. Change is good. Welcome to brandondonnelly.com 3.0.
Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow.
Up until recently, the way to make money on Paragraph was to have readers collect your posts: Writer publishes something, readers mint it as an NFT, and then writer receives small payments in their crypto wallet. I've had a few people collect my posts over the past year, but it has not been anything of significance.
Now Paragraph is testing something new called writer coins. Instead of collecting individual posts, readers can now buy a writer's coin and support them more broadly. I just set this up on my publication and so there is now a brand-new coin in existence called $BRANDON.
One of the interesting things that I was able to do was automatically distribute this new coin to anyone who has collected one of my posts in the past and who is subscribed to my blog (with a connected wallet). If you are one of these people, you should have received something.
In theory, $BRANDON coin should increase in value as this blog develops incredible international notoriety, but in practice, who the hell knows? These experimentations are all part of the journey onchain. Some stuff will work, but many other things won't. Already though, I think you can feel product-market fit for things like stablecoins. Maybe one day the same will be true of $BRANDON.
If you'd like to try out this new feature and support the blog, click here.
Up until recently, the way to make money on Paragraph was to have readers collect your posts: Writer publishes something, readers mint it as an NFT, and then writer receives small payments in their crypto wallet. I've had a few people collect my posts over the past year, but it has not been anything of significance.
Now Paragraph is testing something new called writer coins. Instead of collecting individual posts, readers can now buy a writer's coin and support them more broadly. I just set this up on my publication and so there is now a brand-new coin in existence called $BRANDON.
One of the interesting things that I was able to do was automatically distribute this new coin to anyone who has collected one of my posts in the past and who is subscribed to my blog (with a connected wallet). If you are one of these people, you should have received something.
In theory, $BRANDON coin should increase in value as this blog develops incredible international notoriety, but in practice, who the hell knows? These experimentations are all part of the journey onchain. Some stuff will work, but many other things won't. Already though, I think you can feel product-market fit for things like stablecoins. Maybe one day the same will be true of $BRANDON.
If you'd like to try out this new feature and support the blog, click here.
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