People and Blogs: Rebecca Toh

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

Hi Manuel! Thank you for inviting me to be a part of this interview series. What an honour! It feels so good to see blogs making a comeback (or have we been saying this for the last ten years? Haha) and even better to see initiatives like yours. So thank you!

A little about myself. My name is Rebecca, I'm from Singapore and I'm a photographer. I dropped out of university when I was 20. It was a confusing and depressing but also exhilarating time as I tried to figure out my own path in life. I tried and failed at a whole bunch of different things (although now I want to emphasise that “failure” is in fact a wonderful thing) - I was a cafe-owner, a marketing executive, a tutor, a part-time radio DJ, an indie magazine publisher, a newspaper columnist, an aspiring freelance writer. Then in 2013 I gave photography a try and everything magically fell into place for once.

I love books, reading, writing, long walks, traveling, meeting interesting people etc etc. I'm eternally curious about everything from big questions about where we come from to the small web. Right now I'm taking a year-long break to work on a personal project and to build a shared library in Singapore.

What's the story behind your blog?

I have blogged since I was... 13. My first blog was on Geocities and entirely manual. Every day I would manually create a new table on top of the existing blog entry, add today's date and write my entry of the day. It was so much fun DIY-ing and experimenting with the forms a blog could take and doing it all with very very limited HTML and Javascript skills. Haha. Then I was on Diaryland, Livejournal, Blogspot, and definitely a few other platforms whose names I can no longer recall. Now that I think about it, I have always been kind of a compulsive blogger. I don't think I have ever really stopped blogging since that infamous Geocities blog, whether privately or publicly.

The current iteration of my blog started properly in end 2019. Before that I was blogging only privately and using my public blog as a place to deposit what I'd written for my newsletter, which I ran for a few years. Since then I've been blogging publicly again, but I don't write or post as often as I want to.

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

Barely any creative process. I write whenever I feel inspired to. A feeling overcomes me and I feel I have to write. Or I suddenly remember that I have a blog and a place where I can go to be myself and I write. It's entirely casual.

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

I definitely believe that physical space influences my creativity. I think sometimes we are simply where we are. But my ideal creative environment is not a desk or a nice office. It's actually out there in the world. My brain works best when I'm walking or traveling. All sorts of ideas come to me when I'm on the move. A lot of my mental stuckness comes literally from not moving. The worst way for me to write is to decide to write, find a nice cafe, sit down comfortably with a hot cup of tea and to have my notebook open in front of me. That's when my thoughts come to an absolute standstill, since there is nothing to energise them. I'm at my best writing self when I'm walking or traveling and I allow my thoughts to find me again. Then I open up my notebook or my laptop or my phone to write, and now it doesn't matter where I am - on a train, by the roadside, on my bed, in a nice cafe. I can write anywhere as long as I am first inspired and energised to write.

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

My blog is hosted on Wordpress. My domain is registered on Dreamhost. That's about it really. I try to keep things as simple as possible because I am not very gifted on the technical end of things.

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

No. I think this is the only way I know how to start a blog, which is to allow it to exist in its most natural form - a place where I can comfortably be myself and a place where I can write without feeling any pressure of any kind.

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?

20 bucks for the domain a year. The Wordpress is free. I pay about a hundred bucks or so for hosting. My blog generates zero revenue and will continue to generate zero revenue until the end of times. At the same time, I have no objections to other people monetising their blogs. I love seeing people find ways to monetise their hobbies, provided this brings them more joy than pain. I enjoy supporting people on Patreon (and there's one writer now on Substack I'm considering supporting). I think it's wonderful to get paid for our creative efforts and to feel appreciated by the people who love our work.

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

• aspeckledtrout.com - One of my favorite writers on the internet.
• raggedclown.com - I discovered this blog only recently, but I love the spirit of its author. Great wit. And his writing expresses an irrepressible verve for life.
• thricegreat.neocities.org - I like his minimalism and his curiously technical mind. There is something about how he structures his blog that intrigues me.
• midnight.pub - Random people from all over the internet volunteering their midnight thoughts. Endless fascinating.
• patrickrhone.net - Patrick has been a wonderful source of inspiration for me on the internet. I love the purity of his blog and his being.

You should definitely interview Patrick, Ragged Clown and thricegreat!

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

If you are reading this, I want you to know that it is not too late to start a blog and to impose on us your likes, dislikes, dreams, nightmares, hopes and despairs.