why didn't dreamwidth work?

Jan 12 2025

I decided to start posting on Dreamwidth for awhile at the beginning of 2024. I thought I needed something to shake up my blog and help motivate me to write more. One of the most prolific periods of writing in my life was approximately 2002-2008 on livejournal. That site's been co-opted and barely exists anymore, but dreamwidth is a long-running community alternative based on the livejournal source code from around the time I was writing on LJ. As such, it has a very cozy feel to me. Having a stable of userpics to select to match the tone or theme of whatever I'm writing is nice. Along with custom userpics, being prompted to specify my mood and the music I'm listening to with each entry helps dreamwidth feel a little more expressive than bearblog, where any customization requires modifying the CSS. Making it easier to be more expressive on a cozy, nostalgic platform would motivate me to write more.

At least, that was the idea. In practice, I only managed to post entries 42 in 2024. My most prolific month was October; I posted 17 days out of the month. My least prolific months were April, May, June, August and December, when I didn't post at all. Of course, I was expressing myself online in other ways, but it was a worse year for blogjournaling than 2023, when I posted 55 days, and much worse than 2022, my most prolific year on record thanks to #100DaysToOffload. So what went wrong? I have a few theories:

Too Much Friction

The pressure of needing to pick which userpic to apply to each entry, and also the self-imposed obligation of specifying my mood and music with every post, made me less inclined to post. I can't just write some text, I have to do other stuff too. Also...

It Took Me A Really Long Time To Figure Out How To Enable Markdown^{1 2}

I didn't know dreamwidth even supported markdown until the end of September. This probably accounts for the increased rate of posting in October, because it removed a huge source of friction, which is HTML. I know how to use HTML. Does that mean I enjoy using HTML? No.

I Don't Like How It Looks

Dreamwidth doesn't have any themes I like. I made some CSS tweaks, but making it look normal would require a complete rebuild, which I don't have the motivation to do. All of the themes are way too busy and none of them look right on my 21:9 monitor. I'm pretty surprised that none of the themes are just "a simple column in the middle of the screen, navigation on top." I thought I'd be able to find a theme that looks like that, but I couldn't. When I don't like looking at my blog, I visit it less, which makes me think about it less, which makes me post less.

I Can't See My Progress

When I visit my bearblog, I immediately see titles for my most recent ~10 posts. Remembering them makes me feel accomplished, even if they were awhile ago. A large gap doesn't demotivate me from writing more, because I see a large amount of output and know that I can do that again. I can scroll down and see even more that I've done. When I first visit my dreamwidth page, I can only see the most recent post. When it has a date that's more than a couple weeks old, I feel ashamed and inadequate, and that's no frame of mind for writing. I can scroll down to see my older posts, but it doesn't feel substantial. It doesn't feel like a lot the way a long list feels like a lot.

I Know People Might Be Reading

I can see who's subscribed to me on dreamwidth, and while I appreciate everyone who reads what I write, having a concrete list of people who could potentially be reading really adds to the pressure. I like it better when subscribers are purely client-side. I know some people might be reading, but I'm much less self-conscious when my audience is purely hypothetical. It's not that much different than writing just for myself. This isn't normal brain behavior, but figuring out the specific ways my brain is weird and trying to make the most of it is the name of the game. But that's a really long name, so let's just call it "Sorry!"

#meta #writing