When walking to Bear Mountain, as I’ve named it, a path leads near the old castle. Near the old castle, there are old apple trees. On those trees, old sorts of apples grow, very small and irregularly shaped.
Since they’re in season now, I grabbed one. It was worth it. So much so that I risked another jump over a muddy ditch and grabbed two more.
The same old sort grew at my grandmother’s place a long time ago. We did not appreciate apples. Back then, we were more excited about various kinds of candy. I remember a neon-green variety with a distinctive artificial apple flavouring. Now that I think about it, it would be very hard to call the flavour apple. But it was great: saturated, sweet and very sour. Rather bad for your health, I’d imagine, and something we’d get sick of quite fast, even as kids. You’d eat a pack and then not want to see them again for at least a month, if not longer.
But I’m getting off topic. Let’s get to the point…
Having your personal website in twenty twenty-six is a great idea, even if you don’t work in tech. The feed is dominating; AI is all we’re talking about. There’s an artificiality to both of those. The extremely saturated taste you’re left with after consuming them, and the desire not to see them for a while.
Here, then, the irregular, somewhat unappealing, but very nutritious content of plain old personal websites comes to mind and becomes very desirable. At least to my taste.
However, with some conditions:
- it should be about you, your thoughts and your experiences,
- home-made: do not try to sell an AI-generated thing as something uniquely yours,
- the design doesn’t need to be good, as long as it reflects you,
- a blog is very much appreciated, even if updated just once every three years,
- containing a variety of random posts: travelling, daily life, personal projects,
- bring back guestbooks, galleries, travel logs, book reviews, bookshelves — yes to all.
Even if you madly love the oversaturated flavour of AI or feeds, why not put together something of your own? Think about it: if nothing else, the AI giants need fresh content to feed their beasts, and if we write a whole lot, maybe they’ll leave rare old books be? At least that’s a dream of mine…
Then there are other benefits, of course:
- writing keeps us mentally active, which is needed now more than ever,
- having a you brand in a plasticky world,
- keeping the “old” internet alive,
- doing something other than just consuming.
We’re all very busy, of course, and this is a challenge — but only if it’s made too complicated. The simplicity and irregularity of it is really the whole charm. The degree of pointlessness, something existing for its own sake, in an age of maximising, pushing and generating. Yes, please.
My father would often say about the apples: “We need to protect these old sorts, and we need to grow them.” I agree with him.
* Note: don’t let the em dashes (—) in the text confuse you. I do use them on my own, and they are not a sign of AI being utilised. More on how I actually use AI in Writing with LLMs.