Creative: Blogging Inspiration

In lieu of the crappy journal post...

Let’s talk a little about my inspiration for this blog.

But in order to do that, I gotta talk about why blog in the first place. It’s 2026, blogs are so turn of the millennium. Why not start rambling on a TikTok channel and try to get monetized?

It’s a good question and I think one worth answering first.

Here’s the thing, blogging is easy. You sign up for a service, like Square Space, input your credit card, pick a theme and post.

For now, it’s the lowest barrier of entry into getting into sharing my world and telling my story.

Sure, I could do it on Facebook, but I use Facebook for keeping up with old friends and maybe sharing a quick memory or thought. Plus, Facebook doesn’t feel like people sharing their lives anymore, but more sharing their thoughts on whatever tickles their fancy these days. And usually, the posts are more political in nature now.

Plus and this applies to almost every social media outlet these days -- they own a share in your stuff.

At least with Squarespace and you’re own blog, you pay for it, therefore you own it. At least that’s how I understand it.

So there it is. Do I wish it was deeper than that -- sure, but it isn’t.

I think the first person that comes to mind as a blogging inspiration is Eric Kim pre-whatever he’s doing now. Eric Kim was/is a street photographer I use to follow religiously quite a bit back in the day.

His blog was more of a stream of consciousness coupled with his street photography and living life as a photographer. Kim would upload almost every picture he took back in the day. Add to that, he’d just riff on his blog about everything. His blog resembled more of a Twitter feed.

He’d share this thoughts about just about everything and it all seemed organic. Alas, his blog these days is different and he seems to have gone off the reservation.

I drop in from time to time and he seems to have embraced AI whole hog, so I can’t tell anymore if his posts are organic or if they’re just AI.

I do gotta hand to him, he does live his ethos. From what I can tell, even though he’s gone off the deep end, he’s living the life he’s created for himself and seems to be doing well.

If there’s one guy on God’s green earth I’d like to emulate, Dan Milnor at Shifter Media is the guy. What little of his photography I’ve seen, I love. He’s a working photographer that used to make films, he hasn’t in awhile. Now, he’s mainly doing Q&A on Youtube and talks about photography.

I also love how he talks about and uses journals. One thing he says about a journal I love, is that journal is for you and you alone.

It’s Milnor I think about every time I think about switching out my 50mm Sony G lens.

I love how his the vast majority of his YouTube videos are in black and white. Something I fantasize about doing with my channel whenever I get around to making my own YouTube videos.

I love his writing style.

Yeah, for me, Milnor is the guy.

Then, there’s Dean Wesley Smith, a writer. Now, I have no interest in reading any of Smith’s work, but I do read his blog from time to time.

I found Dean when I thought I wanted to be a pulp writer. Dean’s whole stick is writing a lot to tell stories. He harkens back to the old school pulp novelists that were pumping out one cent a word.

One thing about Dean Wesley Smith is that he’s been blogging for a very long time. His streak is phenomenal. And I like that. He’ll post something, anything, even on those days he’s had a full slate and is dog tired, but damn it, he wants to keep the streak alive. I admire that and would like to incorporate that into my life.

I’m on Day Seven.

Then, there’s Richard Herring.

I think I found him while researching about keeping a blog everyday or something. Richard is an English comedian. I’ve never seen his stand up, nor have listened to any of his other content, outside of a series he writes called *Warming Up.*

Basically, he writes something about his whole day as a way of remembering, plus to get his creative juices flowing.

And then, last but not least is Matthew Dicks. I stumbled onto Dicks via a Ted talk he gave on personal storytelling. I even read his book, which is by far the best work on personal storytelling I’ve ever read.

Now, granted, Matthew and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things. Still, I like him, both as a person and as a teacher on the finer points of storytelling.

And that’s it. When I think about my blog, these are the guys I think about while trying to slog out this blog.