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Personal Essay

Articles and publications tagged Personal Essay across the Atmosphere.

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taco 'bout it

taco 'bout itSep 3, 2026

the movie you loved at 20 gets a vote forever

in 2009, (500) Days of Summer felt precision-engineered for being 20. revisiting it now means seeing both the movie and the person who first loved it.

(500) Days of Summer2009

brennan.daySep 2, 2026

Normalized Fascism in Open Source: $12 Million Given to DHH

Open source has become a safe harbor for far-right politics, from David Heinemeier Hansson's white-nationalist rhetoric and the Omarchy Foundation's $12 million in patron funding to so-called apolitical projects that treat marginalized contributors as political, and why a united boycott of complicit tech companies is our only way forward.

personal essaySocial Commentary

Mothership [Unofficial]Sep 1, 2026

How Animal Crossing helped me swim to sobriety

brennan.daySep 1, 2026

100 Questions for Webmasters

A hundred-question chain meme making the rounds about how and why we make websites. I answer my way through questions on workflow, editors, CSS confidence, webrings, Neocities and Nekoweb, domain names, accessibility, genAI ethics, Gruvbox, and everything else about being a webmaster.

brennan.dayAug 31, 2026

Debian's recent vote to permit genAI contributions, alongside the questions raised by the IndieWeb is Punk manifesto, leads me to reflect on the harm-reduction case, the deskilling of creators, the NFT-like grift of genAI output, and the Potemkin village of an industry that has yet to find profitability.

personal essaySocial Commentary

brennan.dayAug 30, 2026

A Few Small Things

Reflecting on the mental fatigue of posting every day during Blaugust, I share a few small things that cheered me up: a new keyword filter on Bubbles.town, Jan Miksovsky's Origami Projector, and the ongoing, hand-made goodness of the independent web.

personal essaySocial Commentary

brennan.dayAug 30, 2026

A Few Small Things

Reflecting on the mental fatigue of posting every day during Blaugust, I share a few small things that cheered me up: a new keyword filter on Bubbles.town, Jan Miksovsky's Origami Projector, and the ongoing, hand-made goodness of the independent web.

personal essaySocial Commentary

brennan.dayAug 29, 2026

Creating an Open-source Blogging Studies Syllabus

Announcing a new open-source, asynchronous Blogging Studies syllabus that blends writing craft and independent web publishing, built on Codeberg. I trace the decline of free MOOCs, outline my curriculum's anti-capitalist and community-driven pedagogy, and invite contributors and learners to help shape it.

personal essayblogging

Fudge's Felid Notes

Fudge's Felid Notes Aug 28, 2026

The Little Dreams Inside My Head

a personal think-peice on what I want to do in life

personal essayshower thoughts

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 28, 2026

Notice: Bandwidth Exceeded

After exceeding my free Netlify bandwidth for the first time and wiring up a homelab to run this site, I reflect on how my life has narrowed around writing and code, the friendships that did not survive that focus, and the loneliness of a devotion without a clean resolution.

personal essaySocial Commentary

Ms. Magazine — msmagazine.comAug 28, 2026

‘Everybody Needs Somebody’: A Single Mother on Guaranteed Income, Community and Making It Work

Money & JobsNational

brennan.dayAug 27, 2026

Being a Toolshed of Optimism

Reflecting on a reader's description of me as 'nice' and the responsibility of having an audience, I commit to becoming a 'toolshed of hope and stubborn optimism' in my writing. Drawing on solutions journalism, restorative narrative, and thinkers like Rebecca Solnit, Mariame Kaba, Joanna Macy, adrienne maree brown, and Christiana Figueres, I explore how hope is a discipline and how to tether anger and grief to concrete, actionable repair.

personal essaySocial Commentary

Mothership [Unofficial]Aug 26, 2026

I didn't expect to process my grief as a pig farting rainbows, but Split Fiction had other plans

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 26, 2026

Bubbles.town: Four Months Later

After four months of using Bubbles.town, I share my long-term review of the IndieWeb aggregator. The good: discovering diverse blogs across niche topics. The issues: glacial pace of content changes, popularity contest dynamics, categorization problems, and sparse community participation. Overall, Bubbles is a valuable tool among many for web discovery, but not without its problems.

personal essayIndieWeb

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 25, 2026

A 450-year History of Blogging

A four century etymological journey from wooden ship logs and logboards to the modern web log, tracing how the word 'blog' emerged from centuries of record-keeping, computing, and online publishing. On Peter Merholz's coinage of 'blog,' Jorn Barger's 'weblog,' Justin Hall's online diary, the rise of Blogger and Medium, and the state of the blogosphere in 2026.

personal essayblogging

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 24, 2026

I'm Looking for Love

Responding to anonymous blogger Unstory's claim that love is a fake story and does not exist, I argue that love is a real, measurable, and physical fact of human connection. On fMRI studies of spouses, Harvard's 87-year Study of Adult Development, oxytocin and Queer chosen family, and the courage it takes to keep looking for love anyway.

personal essayLove

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 21, 2026

Writing By Accident & Surrendering On Purpose

Reflecting on three weeks of consecutive writing for Blaugust, I explore the tension between writing by accident versus on purpose. Through correspondence with Unstory and the IndieWeb carnival theme of purpose, I contemplate the accidental nature of my blogging journey, the finite fragility of life, and finding meaning in the surrender to compulsion rather than the pursuit of purpose.

personal essayIndieWeb

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 19, 2026

In Defence of Vent Posting

Drawing on my decade of experience as a 7cups Listener and research on emotional sharing, I argue in defense of vent posting. Venting is a natural human need for connection and validation, not a character flaw. Community support and empathy are essential medicine, and we should meet people where they are rather than moralizing their coping mechanisms.

personal essaySocial Commentary

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 17, 2026

Outjerked by the Trickster

I've been satirized by circlejerk.blog, and I reflect on the history of online circlejerking, Indigenous trickster traditions like Coyote and Chi-Jean, and the concept of survivance. A call for more humour and satire in online spaces, and how trickster storytelling can build empathy through shared laughter.

personal essaySocial Commentary

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 15, 2026

Confessions of a Maladaptive Daydreamer

A personal tale living with maladaptive daydreaming—intense, immersive daydreams that replace rather than accompany real life. On Eli Somer's research, the difference between paracosms and maladaptive daydreaming, trauma connections, and how this coping mechanism became both a refuge and a source of enjoyment.

personal essaymental health

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 14, 2026

A Story of the Origins of Religion

On Friedrich Max Müller's theory of naturism and how early religion began with humanity's direct sensory perception of natural forces. From the terrifying awe of lightning and thunder to Ancient Egypt's animal deities that protected against mortal dangers like crocodiles, scorpions, and hippos. A look at the evolutionary arc from zoolatry to anthropomorphic gods, and the problematic colonial baggage in early religious scholarship.

personal essayReligious Studies

Mothership [Unofficial]Aug 13, 2026

When Big Walk is a group date

RecsPersonal Essay

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 13, 2026

Suspect Happiness in Pursuit: An Anti-Interview with Unstory

On the 50/10/40 split of happiness research, the Declaration of Independence's 'pursuit of happiness,' and an exchange with anonymous blogger Unstory about free will, determinism, and whether we can choose joy. A diptych of opposing worldviews: humanist optimism vs. anti-humanist determinism, and the strange beauty of two people staring at the same abyss.

personal essayphilosophy

Brennan Kenneth Brown ♾️Aug 12, 2026

The Weight of Words

On the weight and responsibility of words in public discourse. Drawing from John Rawls's reasonable pluralism and Paulo Freire's philosophy that dialogue requires love, I argue for extending grace even to those we disagree with. A reflection on compassionate conversation, accountability versus punishment, and maintaining hope in a cruel world.

personal essayfree speech