Posts tagged 'writing'

Line-drawn engraving in navy on a dusty rose background, depicting a man in Victorian-era dress sitting at a writing desk. He's slumped forward with his head down on the desk, seemingly overcome by fatigue or frustration, papers scattered near him. A framed picture hangs on the wall above, and an empty chair sits beside the desk.

The Itch

August 3, 2026 · 2 comments · #personal essay #writing #creativity #IndieWeb #philosophy #self-reflection

Trying to figure out what 'the itch' is—my drive to create and contribute to the digital commons. A review of past projects, current interests in Indigenous data sovereignty and self-hosting, and the search for what comes next.

Oil painting in a Baroque/Neoclassical style depicting a dramatic scene of illness, grief, and repentance. At center, an elderly bearded man in blue and red robes holds a ceremonial staff and raises his other hand in a gesture of blessing or command. To his right, a shirtless elderly man lies collapsed and being supported by onlookers, his arms outstretched. In the foreground, a man in an orange robe kneels and bows his head over clasped hands in anguish or prayer, beside an open book lying on the stone floor. On the left, a woman in green ushers forward a toddler in a white tunic who reaches toward the central figure. In the background, a crowd of robed figures gestures with alarm and raises their hands toward the sky. The mood is one of crisis, supplication, and divine intervention, rendered in rich reds, blues, and golds typical of 18th-century religious history painting.

Mea Culpa, When Somebody Writes Your Wrongs

July 20, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #criticism #scrupulosity #mental health

Yesterday, Unattributed posted a thorough dissection of my article on note-taking PKMs, analyzing my lack of intellectual rigour, nebulous wording, and poor research. I use this as an opportunity to discuss the milkshake duck phenomenon, my experience with scrupulosity (moral OCD), and how to stay visible while imperfect through self-compassion rather than rule-following.

Screenshot of the People and Blogs interview page featuring Brennan Kenneth Brown on zacharykai.net. The page shows the People and Blogs series, interview details, and the start of a conversation about blogging, IndieWeb, and creative workflows.

People and Blogs Interview: Brennan Kenneth Brown

July 18, 2026 · #interview #IndieWeb #writing #blogging

I was interviewed in Zachary Kai's People and Blogs series, founded by Manuel Moreale. I share about my background, the evolution of my blog, creative and technical workflows, philosophy on monetization, and advocacy for the IndieWeb.

A four-panel Korean folding screen with a gold background, each panel depicting open shelving filled with neatly stacked books and decorative objects. The shelves contain ceramics, a teapot, flowering bulbs, writing brushes, an inkstone, fruit in a bowl, jade and carved ornaments, and other scholarly and ornamental items, arranged in a balanced, geometric composition with muted blues, greens, reds, browns, and white.

What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really?

July 17, 2026 · 4 comments · #personal essay #writing #research #productivity #knowledge management #criticism

As somebody who writes a lot, I've always been interested in personal knowledge management systems and note-taking apps. But what do these frameworks and methodologies actually give to researchers and the broader world? Has there been a meaningful increase of wisdom since these became popular? I went to look for an answer.

Post-impressionist oil painting of a bearded man in a dark suit and tie, seated at a desk with his forearms resting on an open book. Behind him, a bookshelf holds rows of colorful volumes, and a chair with a yellow patterned back is visible. In the foreground, stacked books in red, green, and blue bindings sit beside a glass of white and pink roses. Loose, visible brushstrokes in warm gold, blue, and coral tones.

The True, Unglamorous Life of a Writer

July 16, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #Writing Process #blogging #creativity #creative nonfiction

Let me be unglamorous and honest about the actual furniture of a writing life. What do my private, invisible days look like? What does it cost and what does it pay? A look at the 4 a.m. writing routine, the physical setting, and what I hope my writing will do for others.

Vintage-style illustration of a hen walking left with five small yellow chicks following in a line behind her, set against a solid dark teal-green background. The hen has cream and tan feathering, a red comb and wattle, and a black-tipped tail; the chicks are pale yellow with orange beaks and legs.

To My Readers: What Do You Want To See More Of?

July 8, 2026 · #IndieWeb #personal essay #writing #community #blogging

I finally curated my blog posts into collections, revealing what I write about most: the IndieWeb, the craft of writing, community, technical tutorials, politics, culture, and more. A call to my readers to tell me what they want to see more of, and a reflection on how organizing my work helps me understand my own writing patterns and what I want to write more of.

Impressionist interior scene: a woman in a white dress leans over a mahogany writing desk, pen in hand, beside a leaded-glass window with a bookcase behind her. To the right, a girl in a patterned dress and dark hair bow sits in a wingback chair reading a small blue book, lit by a white ceramic lamp on a side table

There Are People Who Would Give Anything For Your Ability to Read and Write

July 7, 2026 · #personal essay #literacy #writing #Social Commentary #philosophy #gratitude

In our current year, there is a global literacy crisis. As a result, there's a privilege in being able to read and write. Notes on Frederick Douglass, the problems you don't think about, and why the ability to write is something to be grateful for and use rather than take for granted.

A Japanese woodblock print of a nighttime fireworks festival by a riverbank. Golden fireworks cascade down the dark teal sky in the upper right, trailing sparks. A row of red-and-white paper lanterns strung on a wire crosses the scene, reflecting in the water below along with distant lights and hills. In the foreground, a large silhouetted crowd watches, including children climbing a wooden ladder or scaffold for a better view.

Shake Off the Dust!

July 1, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #creativity #blogging #IndieWeb #poetry

Completing #100DaysToOffload twice in under two years, and somewhere along the way the wet clay hardened at the edges. Invisible ruts form inside the habits you love, and there's a difference between a window and a mirror in writing. The hermit crab outgrows shells, including the ones that still fit fine.

Screenshot of the Wonders of Web Weaving podcast page for episode #8, titled 'Brennan (brennan.day),' dated June 30, 2026. The left sidebar shows the podcast cover art, a cartoon planet on a purple-and-blue starry background, alongside the podcast title and tagline 'with the web, wonder.' The main content area shows an episode description about writing routines, indie web community, and start here pages, plus an audio player showing a 48-minute runtime.

Wonders of Webweaving Podcast Ep. #8: Brennan

June 30, 2026 · #interview #IndieWeb #podcast #writing

I was a guest on Episode 8 of Wonders of Web Weaving with James G. We talk about writing routines, building community in the indie web, 'start here' pages, Maple Syrup Heists, and more!

Close-up of an old handwritten ledger book open to a page of cursive names and columns of numbers in blue ink, on ruled accounting paper with red and blue grid lines, photographed at an angle with shallow depth of field.

Every Commit A Sentence: Git Commit Messages for Bloggers

June 25, 2026 · 2 comments · #git #technical #writing #IndieWeb #personal site #web development

I had 448 `feat:` commits and 417 `fix:` commits. Nearly the same count, for wildly different kinds of work. Here's why conventional commits were never designed for a writer's blog, and the eleven-type system I built to replace them.

Oil painting of a dark-haired young man seated at a small desk in a cramped, sunlit room, writing intently in a book or letter. He wears a dark robe or coat and has an intense, weary gaze. The cluttered room around him features an unmade bed with white sheets, dark coats and a hat hanging from pegs on the wall, a washbasin and jug, and a vase or bundle of cut flowers and greenery spilling across the foreground table. Loose, impressionistic brushwork in muted greens, golds, and blacks. Signed 'John S. Sargent' in the upper left.

COMPULSION: The Writers Who Wrote The Most in History

June 22, 2026 · #writing #literary history #productivity #research #personal essay

I've been writing publicly every day for seven months, and I wanted to know what that looked like for other compulsive writers. From Chesterton dictating past midnight, to Chinese web fiction authors racing through 10,000 words daily. What does their obsessive output reveal about the nature of writing itself? The volume isn't the point. The showing up is.

Watercolour painting of a lush garden scene dominated by deep and yellow-greens, with clusters of soft lavender-pink flowering lilacs blooming throughout dense foliage. Small white wildflowers dot the lower foreground. The brushwork is loose and impressionistic, with washes of colour blending into the cream-white of the unpainted paper at the upper left. Hints of red stems and teal leaves add contrast within the greenery.

Blogging Saved My Life

June 17, 2026 · #writing #blogging #community #creative nonfiction #personal essay

Writing publicly and frequently for the past seven months has saved my life. Six ways consistent public writing transformed me: cultivating curiosity, building connections, investigating rabbit holes, starting new projects, creating accountability, and seeing life's patterns in real-time. An invitation for others to begin writing without restraint.

Historical engraving depicting a print shop in the 18th century. Two workers in period clothing operate a wooden printing press: one figure in a red coat pulls the press lever while bent over the press bed, and another in a blue coat inks type at a compositing table near a multi-paned window. Freshly printed sheets, each bearing a small portrait, hang in two rows on drying lines strung across the room. Ink balls, tools, and other workshop materials are scattered on the floor.

A New IndieWeb Publication? or: I Want to Start Something and Be Bad at It

June 13, 2026 · 3 comments · #IndieWeb #publishing #writing #community #collaboration #creative nonfiction #lyric essays

Inspired by Good Internet Magazine, I'm starting a new volunteer-run IndieWeb publication tentatively called Long Horizon. Exploring my readiness to launch a digital and physical magazine focused on creative non-fiction and lyric essays, and seeking collaborators who want to build something meaningful on the Internet together.

A vintage sepia photograph, likely late 19th century, showing two striped tabby cats posed on a wooden table as if sitting down to tea. In front of them are two porcelain teacups on saucers and what appears to be a teapot to the left. Both cats face the camera directly. The left cat leans slightly forward with one paw near a cup; the right sits upright with a composed, slightly imperious expression. The image has the soft grain and tonal warmth of albumen, silver print photography. Cursive handwriting at the bottom identifies them as 'Darby & Joan,' a traditional English idiom for a devoted older couple, suggesting these were beloved companion animals photographed as a pair.

Yes, Buy Them a Coffee: Support and Mutual Aid on the IndieWeb

June 11, 2026 · 2 comments · #IndieWeb #community #economics #mutual aid #support #capitalism #writing

Responding to criticism of 'buy me a coffee' links on blogs, I argue that asking for support isn't commodification—it's mutual aid! Exploring the economic pressures on creators, the history of mutual aid, and why the IndieWeb needs community support mechanisms to sustain independent art.

Scientific illustration of the spotted lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula), an invasive species, depicted as an adult in flight against a light grey background. The insect is shown from above with wings fully extended. The outer forewings are tan/beige with scattered black oval spots and dark grey tips. The inner hindwings are vivid red with black spots and white patches near the body, edged in solid black. The abdomen is yellow with bold black horizontal bands. The head is dark brown with visible eyes. Text at top reads 'SPOTTED LANTERNFLY / Lycorma delicatula * INVASIVE' in bold black and red type. A gold badge in the upper right reads 'ADULT IN FLIGHT.' Illustrated by Molly Schafer.

THE LANTERNFLY.

June 7, 2026 · #writing #creativity #digital culture #AI #authenticity #nature

The spotted lanternfly is beautiful and terrible, an invasive species that illuminates even as it destroys. AI-generated content is flooding the Internet, and authenticity is becoming a premium commodity. We must refuse the premise that human writing is a niche product.

Close-up photograph of numerous padlocks attached to a chain-link fence, with a red lock in sharp focus bearing the handwritten message 'FUCK LOVE!' in white paint. The surrounding locks are blurred by a shallow depth of field, while warm orange and yellow tones in the background create a soft, out-of-focus glow. The featured lock shows signs of rust and wear, contrasting with the romantic 'love lock' tradition typically associated with such fences.

A Ship in Harbour is Safe

June 5, 2026 · #IndieWeb #philosophy #writing #creativity #risk #identity #accountability

Nassim Nicholas Taleb's concept of 'skin in the game' is the idea that true learning only happens when you have something to lose. And I look at IndieWeb principles of using what you make to publishing under your real name. Having risk and real stakes is essential for creative work. A ship in harbour is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.

Vintage-style illustration titled 'Honey Bears.' Two plush teddy bears sit facing each other in a moonlit forest clearing, holding paws and touching noses affectionately. The brown bear embraces a white bear wearing a red heart-shaped pendant that reads 'My Sweetheart.' A jar of honey labeled 'Pure Honey' and a spoon rest in the grass in front of them. Above, a smiling yellow moon shines over dark evergreen trees, creating a whimsical, romantic atmosphere. The words 'Honey Bears' appear in ornate lettering at the bottom.

Be a Lover: Make Sure the Quiet Wheel Gets the Grease

June 3, 2026 · 1 comment · #IndieWeb #community #psychology #writing #digital culture

The world isn't full of critics, it's full of quiet kind people who don't get nearly enough time or attention from us because we're born with a negativity bias. We need to proactively choose to be lovers and proactively grease the quiet wheels.

A trompe-l'œil painting depicting a scattered collection of aged historical documents, letters, and newspapers overlapping one another. The papers are rendered in warm sepia and cream tones, suggesting significant age. Documents include handwritten letters in German cursive script (Kurrent), printed newspapers with Gothic blackletter typefaces bearing dates from 1817, official-looking certificates with wax seals and decorative borders, folded correspondence with red wax seal remnants, and what appears to be sheet music. Several documents feature ornate engravings of coats of arms or figures on horseback. A few pieces of red sealing wax are scattered among the papers. The arrangement creates a sense of historical layering, as though the viewer is looking down at a desk or archive drawer full of early 19th-century European correspondence and ephemera.

A Love Letter to Everything

May 17, 2026 · 1 comment · #personal essay #IndieWeb #community #writing #blogging #internet #open source

My first IndieWeb Carnival entry—the theme is love letters, and I couldn't pick just one thing. A letter to the infrastructure that holds my corner of the internet together, to the strangers who maintain the open-source tools I depend on every day, and to the IndieWeb friends I've met over the past few months. And finally, to curiosity: the embarrassing willingness to fall in love with a static-site generator or a transit system or a protocol nobody's heard of, which I've come to believe is what kept me alive.

Printed pages burning on rocky ground outdoors, with tall orange flames rising from the center. The pages are from a book, and visible names include Steve Wozniak, Stanley Kubrick, and Leslie Stern, M.D., with a section header reading '[End Of Tra...' and a headline at the top beginning 'Why Did Navidson Go Back To The Hou...' The surrounding area shows ash, gravel, and dry vegetation. The image has a subtle chromatic aberration effect, giving the edges a yellow-green fringe.

Writers Who Burned All Their Words feat. Bix Frankonis

May 2, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #Literature #Digital Culture #blogging #IndieWeb

I am a compulsive archivist, terrified of losing my words, but many of history's greatest writers asked for theirs to be burned. Kafka, Dickinson, Plath, Virgil all had their reasons. A meditation on self-erasure, ego, and the difference between the writing and the written thing, with an interview with Bix Frankonis, a contemporary writer who one day decided he needed to be smaller online, not bigger.

Dozens of origami paper cranes in a wide variety of colours and patterns. Blues, pinks, reds, greens, white, and earth tones, many made from patterned washi-style paper with florals and stripes, suspended from thin strings against a blurred warm-toned background.

A THOUSAND CRANES: Why I Write Every Day

April 19, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #blogging #culture #history

My daily writing is a practice of releasing messages in bottles and folding paper cranes—from Montaigne in his tower and Johnson writing in poverty, to Sadako Sasaki folding 1,450 cranes in a hospital ward. What the essayists, drift bottles, and Senbazuru share, and why the attempt itself is the whole math.

A composite image layering two public domain works. In the background, a desaturated version of Joe Rosenthal's iconic 1945 photograph of U.S. Marines raising a flag on Iwo Jima. Overlaid in the foreground, a hand-drawn magenta sketch of a boxy computer monitor displaying a blue-and-yellow globe icon—the cover of a 1994 NIH poster titled 'Internet: Today and Tomorrow' in bold blue and yellow type, with a pink cursive subtitle. The computer screen replaces the raised flag, equating the internet with an act of triumphant planting.

Memes, Metal Gear Solid, and You

April 17, 2026 · #personal essay #Digital Culture #memes #writing #video games

A history of the word 'meme'—from Richard Dawkins coining it in *The Selfish Gene* in 1976 to Advice Dog and the death of shared internet monoculture—and what happens when you take memetics seriously as a theory of culture. Metal Gear Rising's Monsoon delivers the most honest account of how memes shape who we become. The lyric essay resists this process by design.

A softly lit interior scene shows a young person seated at a small table, writing with a quill pen. They are viewed from behind, wearing a loose white shirt, while a mirror in front reflects their face as they concentrate on their work. On the table are ink bottles and writing tools. A wooden chair and a draped coat sit to the right, and the textured wall and muted colors give the scene a quiet, intimate, painterly atmosphere.

Poetry Saved My Life

April 14, 2026 · #personal essay #poetry #writing #mental health #neuroscience

I snuck off school grounds to write in a back alley, shoplifting Ginsberg and Neruda from Chapters, and I'm alive and writing today because of that. Recent neuroscience confirms poetry activates the brain's dopaminergic reward system, treats anhedonia, and is—more than metaphor—medicine.

A robed Christ stands at left, gesturing toward a group of apostles in a lush pastoral landscape. At centre, an older bearded man—Peter—kneels in supplication before him, arms raised. Behind Peter, a crowd of apostles in vibrant draped robes of coral, green, gold, blue, and red look on with varying expressions of attention and concern. A flock of white sheep grazes at left. In the background, rolling green hills, scattered trees, and the towers of a distant village recede under a pale blue sky. The painting surface shows visible cracking consistent with age.

30: Finding My Footing

April 12, 2026 · #personal essay #writing #theology #gratitude #Mental Health

My annual birthday essay on turning thirty: examining the cross-cultural agreement—from Confucius to the Hebrew Bible to Zoroaster—that thirty is when formation ends and function begins. My dark year of depression which turned out to be preparation rather than delay, and on writing 200,000 words since, which turned out to be the same thing.

The Fool tarot card from the Rider-Waite deck, numbered 0. A young figure in an ornate, flower-patterned tunic stands at the edge of a rocky cliff, face tilted upward toward a bright sun in the upper right corner. They carry a white rose in one outstretched hand and a wooden staff over their shoulder with a small sack tied to the end. A white dog leaps up at their heels. The background is a flat yellow sky above snow-capped mountains. The card is set against a blurred, blue-green forest background. The title 'THE FOOL.' appears in a banner at the bottom.

The Fool's Autopsy

April 2, 2026 · #Technical #IndieWeb #Satire #Writing #Humor

A review of the prank I pulled yesterday, in addition to serious discourse about being silly, including thoughts on the role and importance of satire and literacy. I also share a detailed technical breakdown of the scripts that I added to the prank as well.