I've always wanted to be a blogger. I love reading blogs and have tried blogging at various points in my life, but it's never stuck. It dawned on me recently that I'm better suited to another way of writing online: wiki-ing!

I think that blogging and wiki-ing can be very similar, but there are some things differences that make maintaining a personal wiki easier for me than blogging.

Blogs are inherently public. #

I know a lot of seasoned bloggers say "I'm only blogging for me", but when I write a blog post I can't help but think of someone else reading it. I don't have that problem with my wiki.

Even though my wiki is technically public, I don't advertise it in the same way that I would a blog post. It's possible that someone might stumble upon it, but even if they did, the format doesn't imply it's meant for their consumption in the same way a blog post does.

Blog posts feel static, but wikis feel alive. #

I'm a bit of a perfectionist, so when it comes to publishing a blog post it can feel daunting: it needs to feel complete, coherent, and worth reading because I probably won't update it after it's published.

On the flip side, my wiki is largely centered around topics and pages are constantly changing.

Wikis let you shape content in a way that works for you. #

I recently started playing Final Fantasy XIV because my friend Mia's been playing it. When I asked her for tips she sent off a lot of messages with valuable information in Telegram. The issue is that chat history fades away and I'm someone who thinks in webpages. So instead of letting the information disappear, I created a page in my wiki, copied all of the messages, edited them for consistent formatting, and basically wrote a blog post for myself in my wiki.

In a world where everyone blogs, Mia could have taken her tips and posted them on her blog, but she's busy! She doesn't have a blog! Why should she do that?! But as the person who wanted the information I got to transform it into a format that works for me and that I'll be able to easily recall. And as an added bonus, it's hosted somewhere that allows me to easily share it with someone else if I need to.

Ultimately I feel like keeping a personal wiki meshes really well with my brain. Like I said, I think in webpages. My first instinct will always be to look for information in a web browser, so for me saving things on the web makes sense.

I've never really clicked with dedicated note apps like Evernote and for some reason Obsidian hype scares me. But I've found maintaining a personal wiki to be a slow and steady project that has worked well for me over many years.