I can’t get this Substack post out of my head. Particularly since it exposes the reasons I haven’t been publishing as much on this blog.
Here’s why: Even while I set out to publish this most recent version (7.0) of this website as a more raw journal with minimal editing, I know too much about the internet.
I know that most of the search results for me are “Matt DeSiena” and “Matt DeSiena TBWA/Chiat/Day” or “Matt DeSiena Saatchi.” I know I’m the first result and I know I spent the last twenty years designing it that way. Same with Google images. This site does decent numbers despite the infrequent updates. It was built for that.
But the metrics vs. “write for yourself” ethos of this blog are in direct conflict with one another.
There’s a simple way to reconcile this: tag every post as ‘journal’ or ‘finished’ and then filter the main nav by category.
This goes against the entire purpose, but I’m going to have to commit one way or the other.