The story of my blogs

I’m the latest guest on the “People and Blogs” series by Manu. Hearing from people in this series has been a great way for me to meet some of their blogs over coffee. And now some of you web humans reading this might like the story of my blogs as well. Who knows some of you might get inspired to write something on the Web too. At least that’s the happiest outcome for me. Here goes.

Let’s start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Hello web reader from our beautiful Pale Blue Dot. I’m Jatan Mehta, an independent space exploration writer. Independent means I don’t write for other media outlets primarily and instead publish and sustain my professional writing on my own website at jatan.space as a blog+newsletter. Majorly I write about lunar exploration because our Moon has immense intrinsic value, and is something we all share, see, and cherish in our skies, day or night.

I currently live in Bangalore, a city I like for many reasons and not just because it’s the space hub of India. You must try the ‘filter coffee’ and soft idlis if you come here. And maybe join me for a game of badminton.

If I wasn’t writing about space somehow, I’d still be writing because that’s who I am deep down. When I get the time, I share musings about the Internet, life, technology, writing, and more on my personal blog called Journal J. As part of it, I digitally dispatch a newsletter for friends as a calmer way to stay in touch against the slurp—and now slop—of social media.

What’s the story behind your blogs?

I started blogging in 2011, when I was 17. I had a desire to share the excitement of physics and space with people beyond my Facebook connections. That’s when I came across Blogger and was utterly fascinated by the idea that anyone can have a website to publish articles on the Internet through! No coding, technical chops, or money required. And I loved the power of linked writing.

Fast forward past my graduation and free blogging platform swaps along the way, I got my first job thanks to my blog. Subsequently I decided that I want to write about space full-time instead of pursuing space research. My blog is called “Jatan’s Space” for long now because it conveys the topic and its independence in a nutshell.

I also always had an interest in no-code consumer technology. I loved exploring blogging platforms, reading services, operating systems, apps, and so on. I would sometimes write about them too, and that’s how I’ve always had a second blog in some form that’s not about space. Over the years, I started writing on there about anything else I felt like sharing, morphing it into Journal J.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

I don’t need inspiration per se because I’m almost always inspired to learn and write about space. Here’s approximately what I do every week:

• Scan and read with judgement the more than 150 websites, blogs, newsletters, and other types of sources I’ve added to my feed reader, which I’ve meticulously organized using folders and Feedbin’s search filters. I grab excerpts and take notes along the way.
• Thoroughly read the most notable things from my feed reader and elsewhere on my Kindle (sent using KTool). Take notes again.
• Use Kagi not just for fact checking and research but also to search conversations within forums and social networks for when I need to gauge people’s reactions on a topic.
• Collect all thoughts in one place and order them using Workflowy
• With that context, write and edit either on Bear or my blog’s editor
• Publish to the World Wide Web

For my personal blog, I write and publish when I feel like, and can. Often I refine and post something I’ve previously shared with friends or taken notes on. It’s an easy way to blog. Other times I write from scratch to better understand a topic, and so I research along the way. And rarely, I write to respond to someone else’s blog post. I don’t like microblogging, and don’t like to post too casually, because it tends to be so terribly contextually deprived. And so often I’ll wait until I have at least a few paras to publish.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I think writing is an act of solitude. Anything that provides a queit space is good. I also need my laptop, and ideally will not write until I can rest it on something that’s not my lap. I cannot write on a phone. My thoughts feel handicapped there. I cannot write sanely in cafés and public spaces either. Having said that, I’ve written and published articles from airports, hospitals, and trains when needed—so long as I can hunt down that one spot.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

Both my blogs are running Ghost, hosted on the wonderful and affordable MagicPages service by Jannis. I love how Ghost elegantly handles running both a blog and a newsletter as an integrated service. I view email subscriptions as a delivery option for my posts for those who don’t use or prefer RSS. And if you’re in any other field than blogging or related tech communities, practically everyone uses email and not RSS. Ghost will soon offer the Fediverse as another post delivery option, and I’m eager to see how that might help independent writers like myself.

I use the default Source theme, which I’ve personalized a bit to show nothing but a list of posts and a menu instead of wasting my time customizing site layouts and whatnot. A clean, legible reading experience doesn’t require a lot by definition. And it’s the words that matter at last. Which is also why I’m so grateful to have ditched the cruft that is WordPress and Gutenberg.

Blogging platforms I’ve used over the years: Blogger → WordPress → Medium → WordPress → Substack → Ghost

My domain jatan.space is from BigRock because it’s cheap, easy to use, and has been extremely reliable for me for years.

I use Micro.blog to auto-share my new blog posts to multiple social networks and platforms. And so, thanks to Manton, I don’t need to waste time or efforts on social media while maintaining some presence for possible discovery by potential readers.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

I’ll quote what Jim Nielsen said when he was your guest at People and Blogs:

The current state of my blog is a result of me experiencing the difficulties of where it was previously. […] The best part of blogging is what you discover and learn experientially along the way. I wouldn’t want to rob myself of that.

I would’ve loved to not have wasted years customizing virtually every aspect of my blogs and rethinking the various categorizations but it’s how I realized none of that matters.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what’s your position on people monetizing personal blogs?

I’m going to say something potentially controversial here.

Each blog’s hosting currently costs me $60/year on MagicPages (referral link, if you’re inclined to go Ghost for cheap). And $10/month extra for sending emails to the large subscriber base of my space blog. My domain costs me $25/year. All the other tools I mentioned previously cumulatively cost me in the range of $20/month.

If people are not able to (fairly) monetize their freely readable blogs, then especially those like my space one crafted out of both passion & profession simply cannot exist. My space blog is community-supported through organization sponsors and individual readers, which I accept with no ads and under a strict, public Editorial Independence Policy. I think blogs are a powerful, resilient way to do independent journalism, which we direly need more of in today’s world. Denying their monetization means denying such possibilities.

Sure, you could argue I wasn’t talking about a purely “personal blog” there. But if blogs reflect your identity or parts of it, and space is an integral part of mine, is that not personal enough?

In any case, even when people say they don’t monetize their non-professional blogs and appreciate others not doing it, the earnings to cover its costs are still being offloaded somewhere. It could be their day jobs, family wealth, savings or stocks, technical chops, or whatever else. So I consider those claiming and evangelizing an ethical position against fair monetization of blogs to hold a privileged position.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

• Root Privileges, where Mukunth surfaces the intersection of science, science communications, journalism, and civic duty in a blunt manner—and that’s how we need it.
• Annie Mueller, who writes poignantly about parts of our emotional being.
• Derek Kedziora, because he thinks differently.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

Thank you, Manu, for creating and running People and Blogs. I think it’s a great way to meet blogs over coffee and discover their people.

Thank you also for having me here. I sincerely appreciate this, and my connection to you. Despite blogging being so integral to my life, I’ve often felt alienated by people in “blogging communities” because of my choice to use certain tools or services they varyingly keep disapproving of for ideological reasons. Never mind that I chose what I did because I needed something less technical that just works and that I have modest budgets, constrained further by purchasing power parity. The reason I call this out is to request one thing of all the people who want more people to blog:

Don’t associate people with their tools and platforms unless they own it. Be more inquisitive and empathetic about where people are coming from. Rant less, help more. Most of all, encourage people not to start a blog but to write longform with links. Having a blog is an outcome, not a goal.