#63 | My personal website: https://robertl.in
Build a personal website to help your people find you
The internet was originally never intended for platforms like Substack. Rather, there was a utopian vision once upon a time we’d all have our own individual websites. So I wanted to share mine:
My personal site is honestly the single best way to know me. I post on Bluesky every day of what I’m reading/watching/listening/thinking about and my site then aggregates everything, giving visitors insight into my world. You can also easily see every single person/organization/media entity since 2024 who’s ever influenced my “thought supply chain” or see the various seasons I’ve moved through. (eg. I went through a very intense ‘Tim Ferriss’ phase in early 2024. 🙂) In general, I’m a big believer that building a personal site is the single fastest way to “help your people find you.”
It’s been a real labor of love I started back in Jan 2024 which was when I started using social media every day (I started on X and then eventually moved to Bluesky) and discovering social media honestly changed my life. (It’s how I discovered, for example, Edge City, Metalabel, and New Creative Era! 🥳) I’ve always enjoyed writing and had previously journaled longhand in my own spiral-bound notebooks. Eventually, I moved through EverNote, OneNote, Notion, and Obsidian. And today I journal daily on a kludged-together ecosystem I’ve created of my website/Bluesky/Substack.
My background is in software and I hail from an OSS and #buildinpublic mentality where we literally just give everything away for free (generosity! 🎉) but I also try to “not build castles in other people’s kingdoms” to obviate bad potential outcomes. I’m also old and have been burned a few times now by platform risk so my soul is weary 😔; thus, my current mode is POSSE. For instance, all notes I take while reading (eg. my Antimemetics notes) are public! 👍
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What I’m currently up to
My site also collects my various writings as well as just weird, one-off experiments that snipe me. Most recently, I just launched a new series called The Robertlandian on Substack where I’m currently trying my hand at writing satire (in the spirit of The Onion/Borowitz) and am also noodling on a possible “future of news” vibecode, inspired by Bertrand Russell, that I call the Russell News Conjugator. Finally, this summer I’ll be walking part of the Camino Santiago in a bid to DEFEAT my coworker at our company’s annual summer step challenge (https://JamesVsRobert.com/)
Please do DM or comment if you wish to connect!! I’m always game to meet new, interesting people! 🙋♂️