I started blogging about 21 years ago on Blogspot and got into blogging on my website about 17 years ago, if memory serves. But over the last few years, I’ve lost my blogging mojo, and with all that was going on in my health, my life, and the world, it was easier to just microblog on Twitter then on Bluesky. Evenso, I tried to get myself going again by starting up a Substack called, “Mind Explorer,” to focus on philosophical and theological ideas. But that, too, fizzled.
The only blog I’ve kept steadily writing for is my Psychology Today one — “Concussion Is Brain Injury” — which a PT editor invited me to write after reading my 2017 memoir. Through ups, downs, frustrations, and moments of reward, I’ve rarely missed a month, mostly because my healthcare team kept me on track.
Traditional blogging means logging in to different platforms and expending energy on SEO because of Google’s continual downgrading of search results. (SEO is search engine optimization so that readers will find your stuff — putting it in front of eyeballs, as they say. I hate how much energy it eats up.) Years ago, before all the platforms fenced third parties out, I could use one app to blog on different platforms. No longer. Each platform requires a different login, different SEO methods, adapting to changes they make regularly. It’s wearying. It shrunk my desire to blog.
And then there’s Feedbliz, which emails out my posts to subscribers once a week (assuming I’ve written a post). It’s a robust mailer, has decent tech support, lets me customize the newsletter design, but it’s a total bleep bleep to use. I tried an easier mailer, but it didn’t deliver.
A couple years ago, I learnt about AT-Proto, joined Bluesky when I finally got my coveted invite, and kept abreast of Bluesky-driven AT-Proto’s growth.
AT-Proto is about putting people’s data back into their hands and breaking free from the social media fences. Everything you write or do on AT-Proto gets written into your own PDS (personal data server), which is hosted where you decide. And you decide which apps will show your data. If I don’t want to use Bluesky anymore for microblogging, I can point another app to my PDS instead without losing any continuity in posts, followers, following, etc. That would be like moving from Facebook to LinkedIn and taking my posts and followers with me. You can’t do that with those platforms; but if they were on The Atmosphere, you could.
Because AT-Proto is still developing, there’s no Canadian-based company that hosts PDSes like how WHC hosts this website. This website and all the data on it belongs to me; WHC provides me the server space I need. Eventually, Canadian companies will do the same for PDSes, but until then Bluesky hosts my PDS for free. I could move my PDS to one of a handful of others such as Eurosky, but I’d rather wait for a Canadian PDS hoster.
This year I became excited when AT-Proto matured enough to sprout an all-Canadian social media platform Gander Social and alternatives to Goodreads, Instagram, TikTok, and at last, at last, blogging platforms. Following in the footsteps a fellow Toronto writer, I dove in.
The New Way to Blog
The developers and participants in this new internet social order recently began calling AT-Proto “the Atmosphere” — or The Atmosphere, or The ATmosphere. I’m not exactly sure which is the official spelling but in the spirit of its philosophy, I’m sure a natural consensus will determine it.
Three blogging or long-form publishing apps hit The Atmosphere this past year or so. The most developed one is leaflet.pub. But I went with Offprint.app because I can physically see and perceive it easier, I find it more attractive, and it has the familiar Substack look. Pckt.blog is cute but doesn’t have the features I need, namely subscription.
With Offprint, I can write up to five different blogs in one app. Offprint will email posts to my subscribers when published as well as propagate them on The Atmosphere; it lets people subscribe through email, The Atmosphere, or Standard Reader; and it takes care of SEO aside from me having to write a decent description. Yay!!
I can schedule posts, but not create a separate email schedule. When a post goes live is when it’s emailed out to subscribers.
With transitioning to The Atmosphere, I no longer need to login to multiple platforms, no longer need to use Feedblitz, and no longer worry about my posts not reaching eyeballs! (Although I’ll still share to Bluesky and LinkedIn manually.)
My Blogs on The Atmosphere
I’ve set up three:
- Shireen’s Compositions. This blog’s replacement — see the above Menu item “Compositions.” My WordPress Blog posts will be archived on this site and always available. I’ve tested the email send, imported subscribers, and added its subscription buttons to my websites.
- Brain Injury Travails. Reprints of my Psychology Today blog, starting from the 2018 posts and moving forward in time. I’ve already posted three times on it and am aiming to publish every other week. I’ve added its subscription buttons to my websites.
- Mind Explorer. My Substack blog replacement. Although I’ve set it up, I’ve not yet imported my Substack posts and subscribers. And I’m debating whether to have all my Substack posts go live at once or go out one at a time (although I don’t yet know if I have options). Watch for it coming live in the next few weeks.
- I may or may not move talk talk talk to it, my first blog, mostly because I haven’t written on politics or transit since the pandemic began. But if transitioning to The Atmosphere not only revives my blogging mojo but also lets me write more using less energy, then I may bring it on over.
Since all my data — my posts, my Bluesky posts, photos, etc. — reside on my PDS (currently hosted by Bluesky), I can switch publishing platforms if I so wish and not have to move posts and subscribers because the new app will point to this data on my PDS. That’s the freedom The Atmosphere gives us from closed-shop platforms! And that’s why my next transition will from Goodreads to probably BookHive.buzz.
And so this is the last post I plan to write using WordPress and Feedblitz. From now on, you’ll find my posts on my subdomain letters.jeejeebhoy.ca, which I call Shireen’s Compositions. I’ve moved my active subscribers to the Offprint platform.
Look for the first post coming to an inbox near you soon! However, if you no longer want to receive posts from me, just hit the unsubscribe button at the bottom of the email from Offprint’s servers. But I hope you’ll stick around and explore my other writings as well as enjoy the freedom from the tech bros The Atmosphere brings. Just click on the Subscribe Cards below to check them out.
