I wrote my very first piece for The Verge, and I am super excited because it’s about something near and dear to my heart: personal blogging.

I have had a blog or online journal in some form since the late 90s. I started on Geocities, migrated to Blogger, taught myself to configure Greymatter, Movable Type, and WordPress, and I used all the other sites like Typepad, livejournal, tumblr, Vox (before it became the site it is now, it was a blogging platform similar to what tumblr is now)) and everything in between.

The point is, I’m not new to this; I’m true to this.

I believe we need to bring back personal blogging. My three biggest reasons are the personal connections; the need to be in control of your content and your platform; the need for more personal storytelling; and the importance of bringing back the community building aspect of the internet.

I think I laid out a pretty good argument, but I am obviously biased.

I have been saying I wanted to get back into the personal storytelling aspect of blogging, and I am doing that both with updating this blog and starting my newsletter, off the record.

We don’t control these social media platforms, and a sad, hard fact is they could be gone tomorrow, and what would happen to all the content you’ve put there? Will you even be able to get it back?

Personal blogging, whether you decide to blog on your own website or start a newsletter (or both!), is the wave. Let’s bring that back.

As I said, I am super excited because this is my first of what I hope will be many articles for The Verge, and I got to write about a topic I am passionate about.

I’m thankful every day for this life.

Read “Bring back personal blogging,” and then let me know what you think.