Day 14: Night Stop

2026-02-20

Hello!

I had a long blog post scheduled for today, but after looking at my draft, I realized it doesn't make any sense.

Essentially, I was ranting about SEO and AI and how it just seems to make any website seem robotic and inhuman. And yet, I'm still tempted to do those very stupid things to this blog. Also, those advice pages that claim they know everything are a real downer. So much emphasis on backlinks, trendhopping, and how to monetize your audience. Ugh.

One interview even said to "talk to ChatGPT about everything". I won't do that.

Cool. I think I've pulled myself safely back from that cliff edge for now. A few days ago, I realized that I was spending more time on building a website than actually writing a creative journal. But since writing a creative journal should be the whole point of this blog, I need to set goals for myself.

The big goal, my New Year's Resolution, has already been achieved. I wanted to own a website — and do something cool with it — in a way that wouldn't be too much of a financial burden. Thanks to your support, I'm able to check that off.

Last year, I realized that taking one photo every day (... mostly. 247 days isn't too bad) was more beneficial than just having a photo album to look back on. Honestly, I don't remember the original point of doing a photo of the day last year. I'm not even sure if there was one. But it was the first time in my life where I stuck to a long-term habit, and yes, I'm counting 247 days in a year as long-term. I have three journals and diaries in my desk drawer right now, and they're all mostly empty, except for five to ten pages of thoughts at the very beginning.

Besides being my first-ever life habit, taking a photo every day allowed me to say yes to more things, like sports games and cultural celebrations, in hopes of getting a killer shot. It was a therapeutic habit, and a creative one, too. By sharing my photos, it kept me in contact with friends from school and even outside of school. I made deep connections.

So, my goals for this year. I will publish one article every day. That's it — a simple premise. I'll also try my darndest to make that as easy as possible, because right now, I can already feel myself getting annoyed with manually changing article access after a week and manually backing up my files as I go. I've got to find an automated way to do that.

I hope that, if I actually build a 365-day journal, I can improve my skills at English writing, I can improve my artistic and compositional eye, I can exercise more as I go farther outside to take photos, and I can get access to resources and events through this blog.

But I'm not aiming for all of that. I would lose sight of the original goal, and I might even end up farther from success than if I just stuck at writing simple articles every day. Success might happen, it might not.

I won't optimize for success. I'll just write the article.

Thank you for visiting this blog! Special thanks to the newsletter subscribers; you get this photo a week before the internet does :-).

Cheers,
David