People and Blogs: Brennan Kenneth Brown

Can you introduce yourself?

Sure thing, hello! Taanshi! My name is Brennan Kenneth Brown, I'm a Queer Red River Métis writer and web developer. I'm 30-years-old and I've been writing and chronically online for over fifteen years now. I love writing about a wide variety of topics, and using my software development skills to make open-source projects that I hope will benefit others.

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, I realized I wanted to go full-thrust and try to follow my dreams. I enrolled in university as a mature student and majored in English Honours. I founded and ran a creative writing collective called Write Club during my undergrad, and we released two anthologies under my tenure.

What's the story behind your blog?

I've loved blogging since my elementary teacher, Mr. Rehak, taught our class about Google's Blogger when I was only ten-years-old. While I started sharing my poetry online in junior high, it took until I was 19-years-old and finished high school to feel confident enough to start blogging.

I wrote my first blog post on Medium in 2015. I would post on the platform a couple times every month for several years, often during my lunch break when I was working as a cook at a children's hospice and a on-call custodian. I only ever got a few dozens views on each blog post, but I deeply enjoyed writing for the sake of writing.

I went on a blogging hiatus while getting my degree, because I was so busy with schoolwork—I took full-time fall, winter, spring and summer semesters for all four-years straight. I graduated with a 3.8 GPA and a peer-reviewed academic article, yipee!

My writing skills improved greatly (at least, I hope), and I minored in creative writing specializing in creative nonfiction—I realized this was the genre I loved the most—taking the mechanics and rich sensory imagery of fiction and applying it to real life and true stories.

That's what I wanted to do with blogging, and I wanted to try making a living as a full-time writer. I started posting near daily starting in November 2025, and I haven't really stopped for half a year by now! My views and earnings skyrocketed by posting so often (which I always thought was a myth) and I have no plans of stopping.

Now, that was a lot of background to actually answer the question: I began getting interested in the IndieWeb during my writing on Medium, and found Adam Newbold's community project omg.lol. I initially began a blog with his platform, but I realized that there were a lot of limitations, and I had the technical skills to start my own website from scratch. I had actually been making blog themes for years before this, but I always felt intimidated to start my own. There were too many design options and Medium just let me write.

But the work I did on weblog.lol I was able to transfer over to GitLab, I got the domain Brennan.day for the project and I've just been working at it since. I began iterating on the site each day as I wrote new posts. I read up and added IndieWeb functionality among many other things, little by little!

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

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've written a blog post about my blogging workflow.

It is nothing special, really. I write a minimum of 750 words each day on Buster Benson's site 750words.com. I've been doing this on-and-off since 2011 but I now currently have a 483-day streak. Sometimes I'll have an idea for a blog post in my head going into it, or sometimes the idea makes itself known during the freewriting process.

I would say that I try to be curious about everything, and have a great thirst for life and knowledge. I never assume I know something, because the act of discovery, asking questions, and learning opens up opportunities for blog posts. Likewise, I am very passionate about things I think are important, which also lends itself well to finding blog post topics. No rabbit hole is too niche or intimidating for me to not go down!

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

This is a great question. I would love to fulfill the romantic vision of working in a cozy café or in a public library, or at university campus. But I am far too easily distracted! I just end up peoplewatching and enjoying my surroundings.

I need to be able to focus deeply, and being in my bedroom or office is where that's easiest for me. As Woolf wrote, a writer needs a room of one's own. I set my desk up in front of the window, so I have a lovely view of the outside, and my working space has art and little mementos that spark joy.

I also need my working space to be completely decluttered, it helps so much with my mindset. I don't know if I'm a minimalist, but I want all desk space and table space cleared and empty. I have storage solutions in places I can't see—out of sight, out of mind!

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

Absolutely! I built brennan.day using Eleventy (11ty), a fantastic static site generator built on Node.js. I chose Eleventy because it's simple, fast, and template-agnostic. I use Nunjucks as my templating engine, but you could use Liquid, JavaScript, Handlebars, or others if you prefer.

For content, I write everything in Markdown with front matter. I've extended the markdown-it library with several plugins to support rich content: emoji support, footnotes, task lists, definition lists, and KaTeX for mathematical expressions. I also have a custom rule that automatically converts internal .md links to clean URL slugs.

The styling is entirely custom CSS with a Gruvbox-inspired color scheme. No CSS frameworks here! I prefer writing vanilla CSS as it gives me control. For code syntax highlighting, I use Eleventy's syntax highlighting plugin with a custom theme that matches my site's aesthetic.

On the IndieWeb side, I've implemented microformats2 markup throughout (h-card, h-entry, h-feed) so my content is semantically structured and discoverable. Webmentions are handled via webmention.io, fetched at build time. I also have RSS/Atom feeds, IndieAuth support, and a Micropub endpoint for posting from external clients.

I've set up WebSub (formerly PubSubHubbub) for real-time feed updates, so subscribers get notified instantly when I publish something new instead of waiting for their feed reader to poll my site. I also have 20 rel-me links that cryptographically verify my identity across platforms—no paying for verification checkmarks!

For search, I use Pagefind, a static search library that runs entirely in the browser. No external services or databases needed. It indexes the site at build time and provides fast, privacy-friendly search.

The site is deployed to Netlify, which handles automatic builds from my GitLab repository. I use Netlify Functions for serverless endpoints: auth-callback, token-exchange, micropub, media handling, comments, and WebSub pings. This has let me build dynamic functionality while keeping the core site static.

For DNS security, I'm lucky to be able to use Deflect.ca nameservers, which provide free DDoS protection for civil society organizations and independent media like mine. It's a Canadian social enterprise protecting sites facing digital threats and censorship.

The entire stack is open-source and follows IndieWeb principles: I own my domain, I own my data (plain text files in Git), and I own my identity.

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

I think because I only started my personal blog half a year ago, I'm in a privileged position to say that I wouldn't change anything. Except starting sooner, of course! I'm sure I'll have an answer a couple years from now.

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 revenue? And what's your position on people monetizing personal blogs?

My personal blog, brennan.day, does not make any money, no. I have a couple wonderful people supporting me through Ko-fi and my toonie club. I don't run any advertisements, take sponsorships, or use affiliate links. And I never will. The only costs associated with my blog is the domain on Porkbun, which runs $10/year.

That said, I am one of those few very lucky writers that can say that I do make a living blogging online. I'm enrolled in Medium's Partner Program, where I syndicate my blog posts on the platform and I'm paid based on views, reads, comments, etc. when I paywall my content. The wonderful thing is, though, that they allow me to have my writing on my own site with no paywall, so it really is a win-win.

Since I began seriously blogging in November 2025, my earnings have fluctuated month-to-month, but it's around $1,000CAD/mth.

Monetizing on the IndieWeb in general is really tricky. I would love us to support each other more, like through grassroots community mechanisms similar to mutual aid. The ways people can make money often degrade the quality of their writing and site (intrusive advertising, dishonest product reviews, etc.), but if people can find ethical, non-exploitative ways to make money, I absolutely think they should.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out?

Oh my goodness, I have so many! Please check out all my friends listed on my blogroll. I really feel like I can't choose specific folks and play favourites like that.

If you want to find new IndieWeb blogs, I suggest checking out directories where new blogs and writings are popping up every day. My favourites are Marginalia Search, Bubbles Town, ooh.directory, and of course, Ye Olde Blogroll.

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

The world is in an increasingly volatile, unstable state. There is no need for us to continue using and giving our finite time to the exploitative, misery-creating corporate social media that are so commonplace.

I promise you're capable of learning how to buy your own domain and start your own website. And I promise it's worth it. I've specifically wrote an IndieWeb guide for non-technical people. There is so much joy and fun to be had.

A better, kinder, more human Internet isn't just possible, it's already being actively developed. Join us!