elliott richmond

I spent two weeks away recently, travelling, slowing down, taking photos, making notes, thinking. The kind of experiences that stay with you long after you are home. Like most people, I shared parts of it online. A photo here, a clip there, the occasional thought typed quickly and posted without much friction. And somewhere during that trip, a quiet but uncomfortable realisation landed. All of it lived on platforms I do not own! So it’t time to rethinking where I publish my content!

A small moment of clarity

Nothing dramatic happened. No account bans, no disappearing posts. Just a moment of awareness. These were not throwaway moments. They were experiences I wanted to remember properly. And yet I was publishing them in places designed to forget them almost immediately. TikTok, Instagram, X all designed with an algo for their purposes and not for you!

• A feed refreshes.
• A story expires.
• Attention moves on.

I had effectively treated something meaningful as disposable.

The conditioning we rarely question

I do not think this is unusual. In fact, I think it is the default. We are conditioned to publish where the attention is. Where there is the most exposure. Where things feel like they matter because other people see them. There is also a bit of ego in there, and I do not think that is worth pretending otherwise. Sharing experiences publicly, especially travel, comes with a quiet sense of validation. A nod that says: this is interesting, this is worth showing.

None of that is inherently bad. It is human.

The problem is what we optimise for without noticing. When exposure becomes the primary goal, longevity barely enters the conversation.

Posting versus publishing

Somewhere along the way, we blurred the line between posting and publishing.

Posting is reactive. It is quick, lightweight, and designed for the present moment.

Publishing is intentional. It assumes the content might matter later.

Travel writing, reflections, even half-formed thoughts sit much closer to journaling than broadcasting. They benefit from context. From words, not just images. From being revisited. And yet, I was treating them like performance. That was the disconnect.

Why this matters more than it sounds

Social platforms are excellent distribution tools. They are very good at putting content in front of people quickly. They are not built for memory. They are not built for archiving. They are not built for slow reflection. They are not built for content that is meant to last.

Rules change. Interfaces change. What gets seen is rarely up to you. None of this is malicious. It is simply how those systems work. The problem only appears when they become the only place your work exists.

Rediscovering my own space

This is where WordPress quietly re-entered the picture for me, not as a tool, but as a reminder. A website is not just a marketing asset. It is a personal space. A place where content exists first, and distribution comes second.

• There is no requirement to stay in a niche.
• No pressure for everything to perform.
• No need to justify why a post exists.

You can write because something mattered to you. That freedom is the point.

Blogging is not what we were told it was

Somewhere along the line, blogging became synonymous with SEO strategies, content calendars, and optimisation. That version of blogging still exists, but it is not the whole story.

Blogging can also be:

• An archive
• A long memory
• A record of thought, not output

For creators especially, this matters. Because not everything you make is meant to be consumed quickly. Some things deserve to sit quietly and wait.

A quieter way to stay connected

Once you publish in your own space, a practical question naturally follows. How do people come back? Not through chasing algorithms.
Not by hoping a platform surfaces your work again.

Email is an unfashionable answer, but it is a reliable one.

• It is slow.
• It is direct.
• It does not disappear because something else is trending.

Used respectfully, it is simply a way to say: if this resonates, you can stay in the loop. Nothing more than that.

Coming full circle

Looking back on that trip now, what stands out is not the photos or the likes, but the feeling that those experiences deserved more care than I gave them.

• They deserved context.
• They deserved words.
• They deserved permanence.

This is not about abandoning social platforms. They still have their place. But maybe the better question to ask before publishing something meaningful is not: Where will this get seen? But: Where should this live?