Five Lessons I’ve Learned From Almost Twenty Years of Blogging

Wednesday, 4 February 2026

I stumbled on an old hard drive a few weeks ago, and among the old photos and illegally downloaded movies (Limewire, anyone?), I found an export file of my original WordPress blog. Launched on Blogger around February 2007 and moved to WordPress in early 2008, it went on to live a long, happy, and relatively successful life, peaking at somewhere around 1500 subscribers and a Freshly Pressed post that sent me “viral,” affording me the kind of attention that quite honestly freaked me out, and made me want to disappear back into complete anonymity. Thinking back to my early writing feels a bit like looking at an old high school yearbook photo: some questionable choices and a lot of “what was I thinking?”

All up, despite hitting pause for the last two years, I’ve been at this blogging game for nearly twenty years. I’ve blogged through parenting and life stages, career changes, fashion phases, spiritual awakenings, and enough shopping hauls to stock a small boutique.

As 2026 unfolds and I settle into this new space, I’ve been reflecting on the lessons I’ve learned from two decades of speaking into the void. If you’re a fellow writer in the digital world, some of these may be familiar.

Then again you’re probably a lot smarter than I am.

1. The “Venting” Trap

In the mid to late 2000’s, blogging was essentially a public therapy session. If I was mad at someone there was a decent chance I’d write a thinly veiled blog post about it. And by “thinly veiled” sometimes not very veiled at all.

The Lesson: Never use your blog as a weapon. If you need to vent about anyone whatsoever, buy a paper journal with a lock. Once you hit publish, you lose control of the narrative and things can quickly spiral out of your control. A blog should be a bridge, an invitation to a conversation, not a one-woman bonfire. I learned the hard way that there can be some irreversible real life consequences from the fallout of your digital life.

2. The Vanity of Oversharing

There’s a fine line between vulnerability and exposure. Early on, I thought being authentic meant sharing almost every tedious detail of my life.

The Lesson: You can be deeply honest without being entirely transparent and exposing everyone you love. Your readers may deserve your truth, but your family deserves your privacy. I never went truly crazy with the warts-and-all-meltdowns and messy bits, but I did learn to hold back a lot more than I shared.

3. Stop Starting Over

I am the queen of the “New Interest, New Blog” syndrome. I used to think that every new interest deserved a new blog. Over the years I started blogs about the following: family life/parenting, music and concert reviews (a.k.a. the gig years, and shout out to The Dandy Warhols for that retweet), books, being vegan, shopping/fashion, and cooking (I think three food blogs all up not counting the vegan one). If I got into it, there needed to be a blog.

The Lesson: You’re not defined by your current hobbies. Your interests will shift: you’ll go from designer handbags to heirloom tomatoes in a single week, and that’s okay. A true sojourner carries all their interests in one bag. Don’t build a new house every time you buy a new piece of furniture; it’s okay to just rearrange the room a little.

4. Write for the One, Not the Many

I spent years tracking my stats. After all, what was the point of it all if nobody was reading it? The truth is, it’s a fast track to burnout and anxiety.

The Lesson: Write the post you need to read. If you’re faithful to your own voice, the right people will find you. In twenty years, the posts that resonated the most weren’t the ones I optimised, promoted, or spent weeks finetuning, they were the ones I wrote from the heart with nary an edit in sight.

5. The Sojourner Perspective

Finally, I’ve learned that a blog is just a digital space. It’s not your real life. It’s a place to write and share before getting back to what’s really going on. Don’t hold it too tightly, some posts can stay in the Drafts folder forever and that’s okay. Use it to share moments, a good recipe, a witty anecdote. It’s not the be-all-end-all, it’s as temporary as the lives we live.

Here’s to the next twenty years of blogging, because aren’t we all just dying to know where I’ll be and what I’ll be thinking in my seventies? 😉