Could Bear be my new home?
I’ve been blogging with Bear for about 5 days, and so far I’ve really enjoyed the experience. Not only writing posts, but also reading other people’s, which I do whenever I have some free time—if I’m queueing somewhere, if I’m waiting for the train, whatever. To be honest, reading other people’s blogs is probably my favourite thing. I don’t have a selection of favourite blogs I routinely check (I mainly use the Discover page), and so I’m confronted with a lot of different ideas and lifestyles, hobbies and passions. Some people write poetry, others take beautiful photographs. Some treat their blog like a sketchbook, while others dump all of their thoughts on the page.
I highlight all of this because, surprisingly enough, the writing part is secondary. My goal with this blog was to write something every day, show up and create without fear, and it’s been working so far! I’m loving it! But it probably wouldn’t work as well if I wasn’t surrounded by a nice, nurturing environment: that comes first. Bear allows me to come here and be myself not because of the freedom it provides me, but because of all the people around me that are being themselves and making something out of that. I find it beautiful and touching. It feels, finally, like a tool I can use to connect to others, even though I haven’t had a single 1-to-1, private interaction with anyone. And I don’t feel like I need to have one! Isn’t that strange? There is no direct messaging function, and yet I feel so connected to the people whose words I read.
Another liberating element is that the service doesn’t really rely on metrics or numbers; the Analytics page isn’t really interesting to me, so it’s easy not to ever care about those numbers. Even the toasts don’t mean much on the grand scheme of things: I’m glad people enjoy my writing, but this place is mainly for me. Everyone is welcome to read my posts, but if I’m being completely honest, my trick to writing them is to just assume no one’s gonna read them. Again: I feel free to be myself. I get the feeling that people who will read me will probably be at least somewhat interested in what I have to say, and not in a version of myself that I’ve somehow curated. This makes for a lovely place for me to visit each day, even if I don’t have anything brilliant or insightful to say.
With these premise, it seems obvious that this could become my new home on the Internet. After all, I’ve been dissatisfied with mainstream social media for a LONG time; I’m talking about Instagram specifically, but to be honest, so many social networks end up feeling like Instagram in the long run. See Substack, which started as a place to share one’s writing and became just another theatre for one’s performance. It’s not that these tools are completely bad—I just realise they’re bad for me. And so, I’m left to look for an alternative.
I think that Bear could be a home. But for me to truly feel at home, some things would need to be slightly different. For example, at some point I will want to customise my blog to make it feel truly mine, but since I can’t code to save my life, there’s a bit of a learning curve there. Also, as much as reading blogs makes me feel connected to others, I know it won’t replace the useful and efficient connectivity that mainstream social media provides. At some point, I’d like to have some friends on here. I’d love to read their entries, rather than have them need to read mine. Nevertheless, Bear is still largely unknown to my friends, and if I’m thinking about who to let in on this little secret I’ve been keeping (I only shared my blog with one person; not even my partner knows about it, currently), well… that choice would need a lot of thinking. It’s such a personal, small space that I can’t help but feel very protective of it. For now, I’ll enjoy logging in every day, reading a few posts, getting ideas from other people and exercising my creativity without limits or fear of judgment.