I love reading Manuel Moreale’s People and Blogs newsletter. Every week, a different blogger shares the story behind their site. Each issue reminds me that behind every blog is a real human being who, at some point, decided to start writing. Unfortunately, finding new people to interview is exhausting, so Manuel has announced he plans to stop at issue 150.
There’s nothing like it in the Chinese-speaking corner of the internet yet. I’ve thought about starting one myself, but it would just be one more thing on the pile of things I want to do (laughs).
So when I saw the Blog Questions Challenge in my feed this morning, I jumped on it. It also doubles as a warm-up for the /colophon and /writing-process pages I’ve been meaning to write, and the /about rewrite that’s been on my list.
The Blog Questions Challenge
- Why did you start blogging in the first place?
- What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
- Have you blogged on other platforms before?
- How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing software, or in a panel/dashboard that’s out-of-the-box?
- When do you feel most inspired to write?
- Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
- What’s your favourite post on your blog?
- Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding new features?
1. Why did you start blogging in the first place?
In Starting a new blog at 34 years old, I wrote that I started because I wanted to get on nownownow.com and interact with my idol Derek Sivers. I’m #11 in Taiwan. (Fun fact: Derek was also the 18th interviewee on People and Blogs!)
That’s apparently also how Wiwi found me. In August 2025, a reader named Shaun emailed to say he discovered my blog from Wiwi’s. “Wiwi” rang a bell but I couldn’t place it — turned out to be the NiceChord guy I used to watch on YouTube years ago. He followed me. I was flattered and wrote back right away. I live in Malaysia now, but most of my Wiwi-sphere blog friends (?) and my target audience and the future book audience are still in Taiwan, so my now profile stays there for now.
But the more honest reason for starting was vanity. I thought I had ideas worth sharing.
William Zinsser put it best in On Writing Well: “Writing is an act of ego, and you might as well admit it.”
I want to be a writer, build a personal brand, and decouple from Apple’s platform risk!
2. What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
AstroJS. Over the past decade I’ve tried to restart a blog many times — Gatsby, Hugo, Jekyll, 11ty — and every attempt died at the “designing the site” stage.
Because I wanted to get on nownownow fast, my final shortlist was AstroJS, NextJS, and 11ty. I picked AstroJS because it felt lighter than NextJS and more tailored for blogs.
I host on Netlify for free. The free plan I signed up for doesn’t exist anymore, and I have no idea when they’ll kick me off. If you’re starting fresh, use Cloudflare Pages.
“Standing out” matters a lot to me, and I don’t trust my writing on its own, so a self-hosted site I can endlessly tweak is my best bet.
The upside of starting a blog in 2025 is that AI can do most of the work. AstroJS has great docs, which means AI understands it. These days, as long as the AI knows how to code, you’re fine!
Everything you see on this site was built by AI. I rarely touch the code myself.
Other than AstroJS, I use:
All hosted on Hetzner. Germany is far, but it’s cheap. My traffic is tiny so it’s fine.
3. Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Turns out I lied in question 1 and in the first post on this blog. I actually started blogging at 18. A few high school classmates and I all started blogs right after graduation as a way to keep in touch. For a while we’d leave comments on each other’s sites. But within a year, everyone moved to Facebook. Back then, blogging felt like throwing rocks into a pitch-black hole — no sound, no reward. I couldn’t handle the silence and migrated to Facebook too.
If I’d just kept going back then, I’d be huge by now. But I also can’t go back and buy Bitcoin, so no point dwelling.
I used Blogspot for a few months, then WordPress for a few more. Both are saints — nearly 20 years later, both my blogs are still up. Unlike Microsoft, which nuked Hotmail and Live Spaces without mercy.
Looking back, some of those posts are actually kind of interesting, and they document a lot of my ADHD struggles. On a day I have nothing to write, I might port a few over before they disappear.
4. How do you write your posts?
For the last two years I’ve been recording ideas in Obsidian every day. My ideas live in two places: the daily journal I write each morning, and one very long file called Blog Ideas.md.
After upgrading to the iPhone 17, my favourite feature (besides 3x battery life) is the Action button. I’ve mapped it to open my current month’s Obsidian note — long press and I’m capturing an idea with almost zero friction.
When I feel like blogging but have no idea what to write, I mine these two places.
In my journal I tend to write standalone ideas as H4s — just two or three paragraphs each. I might get three or four in a single day. That gives me a large stockpile of seeds.
Here’s one I jotted down yesterday:
#### Chasing fame and fortune is the most fun strategy game
Chasing fame and fortune isn't great, but it's really fun.
What move maximizes value next, which resources to grab first, which ones can wait. How to hide your motives so no one sees it coming, how to influence where others place their pieces.
When I want to go deep on one of these, I use the Note Refactor plugin in Obsidian to spin it out into its own file right on the spot.
I draft in Obsidian with Typewriter mode on. Then I start a pomodoro timer (Raycast’s built-in Focus) — no quitting until the timer’s up.
I need to go this far to actually focus, because I have ADHD. It’s like needing full-screen mode to focus when playing a game.
A first draft usually takes one or two pomos (a pomo is 25 minutes). Editing and publishing is another pomo.
Once I’m happy, I hand it off to Claude Code to proofread, translate to English, review once more, and publish.
5. When do you feel most inspired to write?
Two books changed how I think about inspiration: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield and The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.
The War of Art says: just show up every day. Sit there long enough and inspiration shows up too.
The Artist’s Way says: write 3 pages every morning, no matter what. Stream of consciousness is fine.
These days, after dropping my kid off at school, I walk and let my mind wander for 25 minutes, then write morning pages for another 25. A lot of my ideas — including The Player’s Mindset and Rabbit Tactics — came out of this ritual.
Besides the sacred morning hours, my honest answer is: “I’m most inspired when the kids are at school.” Otherwise they want to play and I get nothing done. So, to anyone reading this who wants to be more productive: don’t have kids!
6. Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
I tried building a pipeline that would queue a post the night before and auto-publish at 6am the next day. I just couldn’t keep a buffer stocked.
I prefer writing in the moment. Like today — I saw the Blog Questions Challenge in my feed, and now I’m writing the Blog Questions Challenge. I barely keep a stockpile. And since I’ve decided not to post daily, there’s no pressure to build one.
Whatever dopamine is running hot in my head that day is what I write about. If anything counts as “drafts,” it’s those H4 seeds I haven’t dug into yet.
The Sunday newsletter is usually written Sunday morning too, so I can’t schedule a fixed send time. It goes out somewhere around noon.
After finishing one post in a day, I feel like I’ve done enough. I rarely have the energy or momentum for a second.
If I go a whole week without wanting to write, but I’ve told myself I owe a newsletter and two posts, I’ll pick one of those seed paragraphs, hand it to Claude, and have it draft a post. Then I edit word by word and ship.
I’ve always believed the idea a piece carries matters more than “who” wrote it — which is why I don’t mind letting AI help.
7. What’s your favourite post on your blog?
I like a lot of them — it’s hard to pick just one. But I do try to make every post unique, easy to follow, and useful. If a post isn’t useful, it usually stays in Obsidian and never gets published.
My favourites tend to be the ones that explain something everyone already knows, but with a metaphor nobody else thought of. I feel smug about them.
My posts roughly fall into four types. Since I can’t pick one, I’ll pick two from each.
Instructional. I tell the reader straight up what not to do and what to do. It reads like the little angel (devil?) on my shoulder nagging me. I’m no guru. When I write “you should do this,” I’m really saying “I should do this” to myself. The “In games” and “In reality” sections in The Player’s Mindset are all written this way.
Observational. I noticed a pattern and had something to say.
Personal. Something happened in my life that triggered a reflection, which led to a lesson. The “Player notes” sections in The Player’s Mindset are written this way.
- The pursuit of labels and being seen as clever
- The passive, brain-off investing strategy of firing yourself
Tribute. Posts about other people — usually hero worship posts and community event recaps I spent way too much time on:
8. Any future plans for your blog?
I want this site to be my creative home base. Whether I’m writing books, writing apps, or making YouTube videos, this is where I come to restore HP.
Of course there are mercenary goals too. Grow newsletter subscribers, do a little SEO, publish a book through it, make lots and lots of money from it.
A redesign? Absolutely. New features? Definitely. There are plenty of things about the current site I’d like to improve, and 100+ posts in, it feels like a good time to optimize. v2.0 is already in the works.
Thanks for reading this far. Looking forward to whatever comes next.
P.S. If you want more of these Blog Questions Challenge posts, you can follow the trail from the list on Trashposts.
