everyone should start a blog (yes, including you) - by maja

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everyone should start a blog (yes, including you)<br>why sharing your thoughts online is a secret life-expanding technology

maja<br>Jun 24, 2025

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Ever since starting mine, I’ve become that obnoxious friend who says everyone should start a Substack.<br>Partly, it’s selfish: I want to see more of the inner worlds of the people I love. I want to read the way you think. I want your digressions, your metaphors, your particular way of describing a certain kind of afternoon light.<br>But it’s also because starting this Substack has changed me in ways I didn’t fully appreciate until it happened. It’s been one of the most unexpectedly beautiful experiences of the year, one that’s felt both existentially transformative and emotionally intimate. Below I try to articulate this shift and make my case for why you might consider starting your own. I note this is all happening while I’m far from being a ‘known’ Substacker, with my humble, wonderful 60 subscribers.

1. Writing has made me feel seen in a way I didn’t know I craved

I don’t think I’ve ever felt this deeply seen before by already close friends, but also by interesting strangers on the internet. There’s an intimacy to it: people reading your work and gifting it their attention, resonance and time.<br>When I first launched this blog, I hoped for this not so subtly. In my first post, I quoted one of my favourite Substackers, Henrik Karlsson, who described a blog as “an extremely long search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting things to your inbox” (read this if you need more convincing to start a blog), a a signal flung into the void, hoping to summon kindred minds. This is already happening for me, slowly, and it’s magical.<br>It reminds me of when my artist friend V had a documentary screening, and afterward we all flooded her with specific, thoughtful, warm responses about the film and also about her. Or when she opened an exhibit and we all came, lingered, took it in slowly, and shared what it made us feel.<br>I remember thinking, I want to create things that allow for that kind of seeing. I’ve felt seen before in life, but never quite like this. This feels like my interior, the pace and pulse of how I think, is being noticed, which makes me feel profoundly loved. I feel myself expanding in the presence of being witnessed. The love begets more love, which is energetic, restorative and magical. It makes me feel larger than life, alive with boundless energy.<br>Even my parents subscribed and like my posts sometimes (hello mum and dad!). Unexpectedly, this has created a new kind of closeness between us. They’ve told me they love having this deeper insight into my inner world. The blogpost becomes both catalyst and context, a doorway into more intimate conversations we’d never had before.<br>Last week, I read one of my essays aloud at the Petersham Bowling Club open mic night with J. The average age in the audience was around 75. Afterward, a few people came up to share how they received my words. I nearly cried. Art makes that kind of communion possible, and writing, this small, personal, inconsistent practice, is my way in.

2. It’s deepening old friendships, and attracting new ones

Writing helps me reconnect with old friends and draw in new, wildly aligned people. It’s been a soft but steady beacon for serendipity.<br>One of my friends, E, is moving to San Francisco, and I found myself gently urging her to start a Substack too as a way to stay close (E, please do!). This blog has helped me stay in touch with long-distance friends, and even people I once knew vaguely have become more emotionally present in my life through reading these posts.<br>It’s restarted conversations with people I hadn’t spoken to in years. It’s expanded the surface area of luck, magic, and human connection in my life tenfold.<br>I think what we often lack when it comes to maintaining friendships is context or a reason to reach out. Sometimes a name just doesn’t float to the top of your mind in the busy hum of life. But a newsletter or post, even a small one, brings you back into someone’s field of awareness. It’s like an AI prompt for your social graph: remember me? I’m still here, thinking about things.<br>Thanks for reading velvet noise! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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3. Sharing makes you more discoverable to the right people

As I’ve become more legible to myself through writing, I’ve also become more legible to the world. And as that legibility increases, the universe seems to guide me toward the people and places I’m meant to find.<br>Sometimes the discovery feels designed, I’ve tried sharing on Twitter, my personal instagram, through the Slate Star Codex subreddit, and through small marketing experiments (my boldest so far: open mic night at the Petersham Bowling Club).

new guerilla substack marketing tactic: open mic nights at bowling...