Matt Mullenweg’s birthday wish is for people to blog. I thought I’d blog about how blogging has connected me with all different kinds of people, most of whom I’ve never met in person, just through the simple act of writing something on my own domain and hitting “Publish.”

Here is a non-complete list of blog posts I’ve written over the years that complete strangers have emailed or messaged me about.

I didn’t write these with SEO in mind. There has never been ads on this blog. I wasn’t paid to write any of these posts. I just wanted to share what I’m doing/thinking/working on in hopes that it might help someone later. They mostly help me later, but I’m delighted they’ve helped other people, too.

• Shopsmith repair
• Weather stations
• Digital gardens
• Publishing photos I’ve taken in a Japanese science magazine
• A possible relative from Hungary after seeing a post mentioning my grandmother’s name
• Miele coffee maker repair
• Jekyll RSS feeds and Jekyll tools in general
• Uploading images to WordPress via Apple Shortcuts
• Micropub implementations with Apple shortcuts
• WordPress REST API & XML-RPC API with Apple Shortcuts
• Domain name longevity
• WordPress Block art
• Arc browser
• How to design projects for learning things
• Paleo/primal lifestyle
• Compiling WordPress Contributor stats
• Why to blog
• Moving files to a Mac from Microsoft Remote Desktop
• CSS Confetti
• Responsive D3.js bar chart with labels
• How to pre-fill Google forms
• Let’s make a pie chart with D3.js
• Get the most out of your Kindle with these 4 tools
• Adding Homebrew MySQL service to your PATH
• Facts about the Hudson River
• Adding months to a calculated date in Salesforce
• Making hotdogs without a grill
• Infusing gin with rose
• Mocktails that don’t suck
• A year of kombucha experiments
• Starting a home bar
• Lentil soup
• The long exposure guide Sean and I wrote
• Thanksgiving meal price inflation
• Running Zapier actions only during business hours
• Books I’m reading
• My F1 kayak builds
• Spoon carving
• Five Minute Journal TextExpander Snippets
• Scraping Reddit
• AppleScript

I’m sure there are more I haven’t remembered.

The emails and messages from some of these posts have turned into IRL friendships, freelance work, speaking gigs at conferences, real job offers (including two I took!), news quotes, and having my art included in shows.

This still surprises and amazes me whenever I stop to think about it. I’ve only been blogging for ~15 years, most of that using WordPress. Starting blogging in 2008 felt like I was late to the game. Compared to Matt, I was, but doing things consistently for years adds up.

Now, 15 years after deciding to blog, I’m proud to have a job working for Matt at Automattic where I can help other people create their place on the web.

The internet is what you make of it. Blogging is what you make of it.

Happy Birthday, Matt, and thanks for doing what you do.