People and Blogs: Keenan

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

Hi. I'm Keenan. I'm a non-binary (they/them pronouns) visual & verbal artist originally from Chicago, but now I live a bit further south near Louisville with my wife, Katy, and our extremely cool and normal dog, Olive. Despite being born and raised in the USA, I've never really felt like I belong here; my identity isn't particularly tied to my place of residence.

In fact, the only constant with regards to my identity is my relentless pursuit in trying to understand who I am and what the hell I want to do—which is, like, super cool to keep experiencing as I near 40. I was sort of bullied by [grand sweeping gesture] society into attending college, where I spent six and a half years screwing around, changing majors four times before finally graduating with a B.A. in Fiction Writing (Theater Acting minor) and so much debt. SO MUCH DEBT.

Like many overachieving morons who graduated art school with loads of debt and no direction, I found myself in a more traditional corporate job. It was there that I discovered that, on top of my writing chops, I was a pretty gifted public speaker who had a knack for teaching people about complex topics. So over the course of a decade, I ended up weaseling my way into Learning & Development roles for a variety of tech companies which culminated in a six-figure salary and a burnout-induced nervous breakdown.

One day in the middle of the pandemic, my wife sat me down and said, "Hey, you can't keep doing this. Your mental health is not only hurting you, but also me."

To which I said, "I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO. I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM. I'M JUST SCARED ALL THE TIME." And then after further consideration, I eventually said, "Okay," and I quit my job.

For the last three and a half years, I have focused on reconnecting with my creative inner-child. My mental health has never been better!

Now I take photos, I do voice acting and podcasts, I make the occasional video, I pretend to be a web developer, and I write a lot of words infused with earnestness and chaos on my very good blog, A Very Good Blog.

My other hobbies include playing too many video games, watching too many shows and movies, bouldering, and feeling very sad and lonely as I try to navigate the complexity of adult friendships. I compensate for that last bit by trying make people laugh and/or cry with my writing.

What's the story behind your blog?

O, how I've yearned for a little place on the Internet that serves as a perfect representation of me in all my wondrous, stupid glory. As a young teen, it was Geocities. In college, it was LiveJournal and uJournal. Later, it was Squarespace. Then, later, it was Squarespace again. Then, later, it was Squarespace again. All of these homes, so many different domains, so many different identities. I thought for sure I wanted to be an author of books, but it turns out I just wanted to write about being the author of books rather than write the books. Then I thought for sure I wanted to be a tech blogger and did my very best John Gruber impression for a little while. Then I thought for sure I wanted to be a podcaster. And each endeavor ended the same: I would do it for a bit, I would (maybe) gain a modicum of notoriety, and then I would question everything and burn it all to the ground! When I finally shut down my tech blog, I thought I was closing the door on writing online forever (I wasn't). Clearly, I wasn't cut out for it (I was). Maybe I didn't need a website after all (I did)!

At some point, in the midst of an aspirational fit, I thought it would be good to have a "personal brand" online again. I had long lost my gkeenan.com domain, so I went with the similar, but infinitely more confusing gkeenan.co. The G is my first initial, because at the time I was still holding onto the misguided notion that I would be known, professionally, by G. Keenan Mylastname. The problem being that I hate my first and last names and have only ever identified with my middle name, Keenan. I have since eschewed both, except, obviously, for my domain, which I often think about changing. Unfortunately, keenan.com is taken by some California-based consulting company that I've resented for as long as I can remember. In fact, the only reason I agreed to do this interview is so I can bring attention to my GoFundMe dedicated to amassing enough personal wealth to where I can buy that company out, shut it down, and pillage the domain for my own nefarious use.

Until the day I have successfully executed my hostile takeover of keenan.com, or until I get very bored, I will be on gkeenan.co. It began its life as a voice acting portfolio. Then it expanded into a broader art portfolio when I quit my job. Then I one day decided I WAS NOT ACTUALLY DONE WITH WRITING ONLINE and carved out a little section of my Squarespace site and told myself I wasn't going to worry about finding a niche, I was just going to write about what I wanted to write about. I called it A Very Good Blog because:

1. I thought it'd be kinda funny to be a cheeky asshole about it.
2. If only one person was going to like my blog, it might as well be me.

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

The main thing that defines my process is just how remarkably undisciplined I am. I used to envy writers who sit down and poke away at their computers or their typewriters or their dictaphones all day, every day. But that has not been, and likely never will be my way.

To be clear, I am open to evolving! But my brain, who is a bastard, has as of yet proven unwilling. Until that changes, I suppose I will be relegated to a life where I think and think and think until my head is so full of amorphous musings that, in my desperation to rid myself of them, I am compelled to smack a keyboard until fully drained of all emotion.

And then sometimes Robb posts about the apps he uses and I go, "I wanna do that!" And then I do that, too.

The point is: inspiration is everywhere, motivation is elusive. There are some things, especially recently, that I've written under absolute duress. I knew the words needed to get out there, but it was work. Good work, but work. I had to wrench it out of me. When I was younger, I probably would have abandoned them, thinking that if they didn't come easy, I didn't mean them enough. I am slowly learning that sometimes it means they're the most important ones.

Ultimately, I am proud of what I've created under those circumstances, even though toiling with a piece for months, if not years, can be demoralizing.

I do wish it were easier. More consistent.

Because sometimes the spark is just... there. It ignites. A creative wildfire engulfs me. I sit down at my computer, nearly unable to contain the words. They come out as quickly as my fingers allow. It's as though they always existed in that order, they needed only to be revealed.

Regardless if the writing is a deluge or a trickle, the technical process looks very similar. I rarely rewrite full drafts. I edit as I write. (A much better writer would tell you to ignore editing and just get your Shitty First Draft down on the page, to which I say, "lol," and also, "lmao." Who do you think you're talking to? Someone who isn't a stubborn idiot, clearly. Sorry, Anne, I'm gonna edit as I write.)

Also, I read my writing aloud. A lot. Over and over and over. This serves a few different purposes as I put words onto the page:

1. It helps me edit, because I'm less likely to overlook typo or grammatical error if I'm reading aloud.
2. It helps me consider how my prose flows, because prose flow is a hallmark of my style. I want my writing to sound like me, and when I hear me read me I write me how I sound, ya feel me?
3. It helps me practice. I narrate a lot of my work as an audio blog, so reading the work aloud is a practical step to building familiarity with it, just like I would do for any other voice acting project.

Lastly, I will sometimes ask people to read my work before I publish. Usually, it's when it's at a state that I'm happy with, but because it's long, because I've spent so much time immersed in it, I feel like I need outside perspective just to bring me back to reality. Sometimes you need more eyes on something to see what you can't. I can always count on my wife and a few trusted friends to give me thoughtful feedback. If I ever ask you to read an unpublished draft of my work, rest assured that it's maybe one of my greatest expressions of love and admiration and trust for you as a human being.

Once it's published, I'll read it again, maybe multiple times, and inevitably find the typos that every other step in my thorough and deliberate process failed to uncover, in which case I'll furiously run back to my markdown file to update, and hope to whatever deity is out there that I didn't screw something else up in the process.

As you might gather, I am fairly meticulous, a little (a lot) neurotic, and while my writing is thoughtfully considered, brevity is rarely my strong suit.

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

No.

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

I mentioned above that A Very Good Blog was originally a section of my Squarespace site, but that changed mid-2024 after Squarespace was bought out by a private equity firm. Despite the noticeable, years-long decline in the quality of their product, that was the final straw for me. I decided to expand upon my limited HTML/CSS knowledge and build my site from scratch, which I wrote a normal number of words about, naturally.

Now, the site is built with 11ty. I open VS Code, type some stuff on my keyboard, and through the power of what I assume is love and magic, it is sent to GitHub where it does something and then is subsequently blasted off to Netlify, whose free plan serves it to the denizens of the Internet. Oh, and the MP3s for A Very Good (Audio) Blog live on Bunny.

The domain itself is hosted on Namecheap, because that's where I bought it years ago and feel very lazy about moving it to a different registrar, though I dream of a life where I could say my domain is hosted on Porkbun.

For writing, I use iA Writer, since my library syncs across multiple devices in the rare chance I feel stupid enough to write on my phone??? But in all seriousness, I just really enjoy its devotion to minimalism. Its default monospace font is so sexy. The light blue cursor? Ugh, don't even get me started! Added bonus: its flavor of Markdown aligns closely with my own sensibilities. We're a cute couple.

For new drafts, I manually copy over a little bit of front matter into a new .md document, write my words, and when I'm ready to publish, I save a copy to the iA Writer library that is tied to the local folder on my PC where my blog posts live. Then I open VS Code and, like I said before, harness love and magic to get that baby in front of the eyes of my adoring fan, whose name is Mom.

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

This is tough to answer, because, on one hand, I would probably do everything differently. On the other hand, I only know that because I am a product of every decision I've made leading up to this moment. Could I even do anything differently without having had those experiences? It's a real Sliding Doors conundrum.

I promise I'm not being deliberately coy. I am this obnoxious about everything and no one is more annoyed by it than me.

What I've tried to come to terms with over the years is that I can't change the past. All I can do is learn from my previous experiences, accept the reality of the present, and grow enough to be better for the future.

Actually, okay, if I were to change one thing, I would've registered keenan.com on November 9, 1995, the day before it was originally registered by Keenan & Associates. But I imagine if I had had that sort of wherewithal at the age of 9, my life would look drastically different than it does now anyway. At the very least, I probably wouldn't have all this student loan debt!

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 monetising personal blogs?

I USED TO PAY SQUARESPACE.COM ALMOST TWO HUNDRED AMERICAN DOLLARS PER YEAR JUST TO HOST MY STUPID WEBSITE.

In that context, things are much better now. My domain costs are only $34 a year. Netlify is free. Bunny CDN is, like, I dunno, a dollar a month?

I am in full support of people monetizing their art, whether it's a blog or a video or a painting or music or whatever beautiful way they choose to express themselves as long as it's not generated via LLM. We are all embroiled in a system where merely existing is an expense none of us asked for, and given that, I think people should be compensated for the time and effort they put into their work, especially their art. Apologies for being so radical, but Capitalism fucking sucks, and until it finally collapses under the weight of its sheer stupidity, the least we can do is reward people for their creativity, rather than breathlessly spend our money on shit that doesn't matter, like, I dunno, ChatGPT or Amazon Prime or Oreos.

Anyway, I have a Ko-Fi page where a few very lovely, generous, and extremely attractive people graciously shower me with sevens of dollars each month.

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

Thinking about the sites I visit regularly (and who you haven't already interviewed, at least as of the moment I'm writing this):

• I am perpetually in awe of my good friend Robb. He is a digital wizard who builds and builds with a fervor I can't comprehend and he is also one of my favorite people, for mostly non-Internet-related reasons.
• Jedda takes beautiful photos and writes similarly beautiful words on her site.
• Annie Mueller's writing absolutely crackles with energy. I love her work so, so much.
• Anh is an extremely talented designer and artist. I love how she experiments with layout and illustration, especially when it comes to her very special Weeknotes.
• I don't know anyone who changes their site design more than Mike, and each iteration manages to be more stunning than what came before it.
• Similarly, I visit B's digital garden often, just to see what she's changed. It feels like we're kindred spirits in a way, rebelling against the forces that seek to suppress creativity. That sounds dramatic, and you know what? It is and I refuse to apologize for it.
• I love Pete Moore's minimal aesthetic, and how he lets his words speak for themselves.
• Is there any place on the Internet more peaceful than Katherine Yang's lovely website? She inspired me so much as I rebuilt mine.
• Hestia hasn't written much, but I quickly fell in love with what's there. An immediate bookmark for me.
• I don't really read tech blogs anymore, but I keep Matt Birchler, Nick Heer, and Molly White in regular rotation due to their invaluable perspective and terrific writing.

I could keep going. I want to. I worry that I left someone out. The last thing I want is to leave hurt feelings in my wake. But I'll cut myself off and hope they forgive me. Regardless, those are just some of the interesting people I admire, and I think any one of them would be captivating to hear from in this format.

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

One of the things I find most disheartening as time goes on is how (the royal) we tend to coalesce around platforms that make farting out our dumbest thoughts to the masses easier and easier, while the people who control those platforms weaponize their algorithms to commoditize our attention, homogenize our individuality, and erode our humanity. I firmly believe the big social media platforms (the microblogging format especially) are a net negative, and we'd all do a lot better if we learned how to exist in silence again.

I don't say this from some very tall horse. I am not immune to this garbage. I participate in the social media hellscape to varying degrees, despite being increasingly skeptical of its value. I'm on Mastodon. I'm on Bluesky. I'm on YouTube. Follow me! I am about the nicest hypocrite you can imagine and my dog is super cute!

But there's a reason I own my own space on the Internet. There's no one else telling me who to be, what to publish, what is valuable there. I get to choose. I think every single person out there would benefit from taking similar steps to decouple their online existence from these platforms. Be who you are in your own space, and then inject that energy into the broader web with righteous indignation. I think some people call that POSSE.

It makes me so happy to see what appears to be a resurgence in people making websites. I am filled with joy every time I go to someone's personal space and see how they choose to express themselves. I want to do everything I can to inspire more and more people to follow suit, and I am grateful for projects like this that continually introduce me to fascinating people, fascinating perspectives, fascinating expressions of their humanity. As the reality of the world often feels like a shroud suffocating us, witnessing people wield creativity wherever possible reminds me that we do, in fact, have the tools we need to overcome.

So if you have a website, please dear god *email me* about it. I want to see you and celebrate you. We need more of you in the world.