WHY I’M BLOGGING AGAIN IN THE AGE OF AI

Now that I have decided to resurrect my blog after years of neglect, I am struck by just how different the shrinking blogging world is now.  Mainly, AI exists!! 

How do I use it?  Should I use it?

BLOGGING HAS CHANGED

As I look back at all of my earlier posts from 2014-2022, I am struck by something.  I have always been a good synthesizer.  When I worked on Capitol Hill, I had to condense all of the materials that constituents/lobbyists/congressional committees gave me as well as my own thoughts/analysis into three-page memos, and I loved doing this.  And I can see that trait  in my older blog posts, “5 Simple Ways to Be a Better Friend to Yourself”, “12 Tips to Get a Good Night’s Sleep”, etc.

But now AI is much, much better at that than I am.  So the actual value of my old posts is sadly probably a bit limited.  I mean, maybe they could be slightly interesting because a reader will know a real person wrote it because they are dated pre-AI, but for summaries and synthesis of other people’s ideas, AI has me beat.

WHAT EVEN IS THE PURPOSE OF A BLOG NOW?

So what makes a blog interesting now, valuable to a reader?  Now that AI can manufacture thoughts and put them out into the world, what is it that I can do differently?  What do I even offer?

The thing I keep coming back to is the human behind the thought – me.  Even though I’m an ordinary person, I’m real, I’ve had experiences — a lot of them – I’m over 60! So I can draw connections and synthesize ideas from my own lived experience.  That’s something AI can’t speak from, the specificity of being one person in a vast ocean of humanity making choices, living life.  And maybe now that visiting the internet is like walking into a hurricane of ads trying to separate you from your money, or mindless content trying to keep you clicking/swiping away your time and attention, maybe a real human being writing real human thoughts from her own wandering real human mind will be a reprieve from all of that, a shelter.  Maybe.

I think of blogging as spooling out Walt Whitman’s gossamer thread.  If my thoughts connect with one other person and make them feel even a little lighter, understood, amused — that connection of the thread is the reward.  For some reason, that matters to me.  

Which leads into another idea from Ram Dass, who said, “We’re all just walking each other home.”  I love the idea of being a friendly companion for part of the journey, even if it is just the few minutes it takes someone to read this blog.   

I mean, I guess AI could invent a fairly convincing fake personal blog.  But blogging isn’t really a profit thing the way it used to be — it’s just not a very good way to build a revenue stream.  For revenue, the whole world seems to have moved to short-form videos, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.  So in a way, blogging is back to its origins, when it was a communication/expression thing. So I’m not sure why anyone would bother to use AI to create a personal blog.

WHAT ABOUT MONETIZATION?

I will admit, when I blogged years ago, I was listening to all of those “Build a 6 Figure Business” people, trying to use my website to develop a funnel, trying to get people to sign up for freebies/lead magnets so I could collect their emails, simultaneously trying to create some kind of signature photography or coaching plan to sell them.   Right now my blog is littered with that sort of thing, and I plan to clean that up.  I am not the least bit interested in a “signature program” or being part of the extraction culture.  

But I am a creative business.  I do make pottery, carve stamps and make prints, and write books that are for sale at craft shows, a local shop, and on Amazon.  So I may at some point mention those things and try to sell mugs/vases etc., but I don’t have a game plan to extract money from anyone who stumbles onto my website.  I’m just so sick of all of that.  I’m sick of experiencing it, and I certainly don’t want to promulgate it.  

So.  No ads here.  No funnels.  Maybe just an occasional mention of something real and tangible that I have for sale.  

SO IS THIS A NO AI BLOG??

Every blog post will begin with an idea in my head that I write through using Apple Pages.  I’ll write my “shitty first draft” as Anne Lamott says, then revise on my own until I feel like it says exactly what I want it to say.  

And then, well, I will likely run my posts through AI to proofread them, but NOT refine and polish them. That’s important to me.  I don’t want all the edges and quirks of the way I express myself smoothed away.  

This is the prompt I am going to use:

 “Edit this for clarity, grammar, and flow, but keep my natural voice, sentence rhythms, quirks, and imperfections. Don’t make me sound more polished, professional, elegant, or AI-written.  If a sentence is technically imperfect but sounds like me and is easy to understand, leave it alone.

Only change things that are genuinely confusing, awkward, overly repetitive, or incorrect. If something needs more elaboration, tell me rather than inventing or adding it yourself.

Don’t add ideas, metaphors, transitions, conclusions, or emotional emphasis.

After your edit, give me a list of the changes you made so I can double-check them.”  

We’ll see how it goes.  

Here is a link to my my post as originally written, with the list of changes AI suggested, as well as additional comments (AI can be so wordy).  A careful reader will notice more changes to this post beyond what AI suggested, because that is what someone who is trying to communicate and who loves words does – refine and edit on their own, so that they thing they write feels the most true to what they want to say.

What do you think?