It's the one year anniversary of this blog, and I've been thinking a lot about why I started AHE, what my motivations and goals were, and why I continue to write.

To keep things brief I, like many others, got my start writing a blog/being involved with the Indieweb community through Neocities, after being recommended some Indieweb content on Youtube. My original goal was to learn a bit of html and css, but quickly decided the concept of the site was one that wouldn't hold my interest for very long. It's still up on Neocities somewhere but, like so many others, it's now a scrapped project.

But the ideas and philosophy behind the IndieWeb movement struck a deep, deep chord with me, and brought me back to explore blogging more seriously.

Why did I start AHE?

Owning my content

This one was a no-brainer for me. Call me a luddite, but I've always been somewhat distrustful of the big social media companies. I grew up on sites like Bebo, MSN Messenger, and early Facebook, and got to see sites that I thought of as open, creative, and non-predatory, become the opposite. If I could, I would ditch social media completely and live a happier, more fulfilled life, but the reality is social media (particularly Instagram) is pretty much essential these days, both for finding auditions, and promoting my self produced work.

Having a blog like this feels exactly like what the IndieWeb evangelists describe: my own little corner of the internet. I own AHE. I own the domain, the pictures, and every word of the content I post. I do POSSE it out to Bluesky but that's more for Webmentions than anything else.

I don't think anyone reads this blog. The Bluesky has barely any followers and at this point I think my posts have only ever had likes from two people. That's fine. I'm honestly happy with that. I'm not doing this to amass a huge following, I'm doing it for myself. If anyone happens to find it interesting or wants to engage, that's great, but this blog serves its purpose whether anyone reads it or not.

Anonymity

This one's tricky, and I mention it pretty regularly in my posts.

I really struggle to decide how open I should be. On the one hand I want to be as honest as possible on this blog; I want to talk about what it takes to work in the arts, and the reality of trying to live a sustainable life in an inherently unsustainable career. I want to talk about leading a healthy social life whilst working horrible, unsociable hours at a day-job that you find unfulfilling.

But the very nature of having this unusual job means that I can be pretty easily identified by readers determined enough to figure out who I am. Sure, I might be doing some local theatre work right now, but back in the day I was in a pretty big TV show with a fair few famous actors in it, and if I go on to do high profile work again and people find this blog, I don't want my words being used against me.

Reading this back, I know how silly this sounds. It isn't even a fear of "being cancelled" or anything, but this industry is obsessed with reputation, and will go to great lengths to avoid theirs being tarnished. If I'm honest about some of the jobs I've worked or the people I've worked with, there's a chance that my words could come back to bite me, no matter how hard I try to remove any identifying details.

That being said, this blog does provide me some level of anonymity. Nothing here has my real name on it, and the contact email is a generic AHE address. If I'm careful I know I can get away with saying things on here that I would never dream of putting on a professional Instagram or Facebook.

The end result is a blog that sits somewhere between a professional social media account, and my personal pen-and-paper diary (yes, I keep one of those too). A happy medium where I can say what I feel the need to say, whilst exercising a little healthy restraint. No-one needs to read my real diary after all. For the moment I'm, not happy, but accepting of this situation. I'll probably always want to be more brash, to name names, but I think the discipline will pay off in the long run.

Built for sustainability

I've talked a little about my passion for environmentalism in a previous post, but a big part of why I do this is to promote a healthier engagement with the internet both for myself and other people.

It feels a little ridiculous to say that I'm writing a blog about my acting career for environmental reasons, or because it's inherently more ethical than using Instagram or Blogger or whatever. Surely, with there being no ethical consumption under capitalism, the only choice is to not engage, right? Not having a blog at all must be better than having one? But I think that falls into a pretty destructive, nihilistic trap. Who benefits from you not engaging with the world around you? Who benefits from you not putting yourself out there? You don't, that's for sure! But if you're a billionaire tech bro rolling out a new slew of anti-consumer terms and conditions, or a far right lobby group looking to pass oppressive legislation, a disengaged, uninspired populace unwilling to challenge the status-quo is your best fucking friend.

Do I think I'm going to solve any major global issue with this blog? No. But repeatedly exercising the muscles that made me start AHE in the first place keep those ideas at the front of my mind. Since I started writing regularly here I've become more clear in my convictions, and more adept at breaking down my thoughts and feelings about what's happening around me. Art is a human endeavour, a holistic practice, it affects our life as much as our life affects it, and keeping that circle moving is how we grow.

A little about BearBlog

You're probably wondering why the alternate title for this post is what it is, a fair question. This is more of a recommendation than anything else.

For me, my favourite IndieWeb-adjacent project right now is BearBlog. A quick look at what Bear is and how Bear works should give you plenty of clues about why I like it as a service, it seems to be setting out to meet every criteria it can whilst still making an easy to use service that helps people cross that barrier to entry that coding poses.

I wish AHE ran on Bear, but there are plenty of reasons it doesn't...

• AHE started off as a way for me to learn coding which have been as prominent a part of the Bear experience.
• I like having complete control of the site, and relying on another service to host my work seemed to defeat the purpose of what I was going for.
• I'm cheap and didn't want to subscribe to another service.

but there are loads of reasons I wish it did. The user experience is clean and simple, stories of customer support seem genuinely wonderful, and it would save me a lot of hassle updating post lists, RSS feeds, and Webmention features manually every time.

But the best part of Bear is the community. Nearly every time I find myself really enjoying someones blog, I find that little Bear at the bottom smiling at me.

The blog I return to most often is NotesbyJCProbably. Jedda has taken the concept of sharing her life and turned it into an art form. Her pictures are gorgeous and transporting, and her writing is often vulnerable, personal, and inspiring, but always engaging. Her weeknotes (a feature which seems to have taken a break recently) acts as a gateway to blogs across the IndieWeb that have resonated with her. A little curated tasting menu designed to get you clicking and reading and clicking and reading. I've spent many commuting hours going through her postrolls looking for the next hidden gem.

Discoverability on Bear is a feature I wish was possible outside of its unfortunately walled garden. I've made a point to join as many IndieWeb directories as I can, but there's never a guarantee that your application will be seen, let alone read and accepted. Hell, it took me long enough to get the Indie Webring working.

But the community on Bear is emblematic of what I love about the wider IndieWeb community. It's a bunch of incredibly passionate creatives from all walks of life who see the value in sharing for sharing's sake. Nobody is out here farming likes, or engagement-baiting. We're here because we love it, because it's important to us, because it's worth it. It feels like a net positive in a time when those are very hard to come by.

What's next for AHE?

I was talking to a friend of mine recently about writing, specifically about actors writing, and he mentioned the importance of artists "seizing the means of creative production". Aside from just liking that phrase, he's right. Staying creative under your own steam is essential. If you only do it when a job comes through not only will you be out of practice when the job arrives, but you'll spend less time over all doing what you love.

That's probably the biggest thing I've taken from working on this blog for the past year, and what I really want to continue to take forward. Writing this blog has helped me remain present and proactive in my personal and creative life. Every month I get to break down where I am in my career and plan ahead for the next. Every month I get to reflect on what I've been feeling, and how my emotions shape my decision making. It's a little bit like therapy in public.

That's not to say I don't write some articles with an audience in mind. I wrote a post about whether or not you should go to drama school with the full intention of writing several other posts about the topic, from audition planning, to what to expect when you get there. I think I would have liked similar write-ups when I was auditioning. When I first started out I scoured the internet for blogs by drama students and found one that stuck with me, where the writer spoke for nearly a whole paragraph about the struggle to fill up her water bottle before the audition. It drove me up the wall, and I vowed I would come up with something better. At some point I will. It's in the drafts at the moment. Like everything else.

There's also something quite nice about having a project I can look back on in a number of years and see how far I've come. Every brick laid, every step taken.

I don't have any further plans for this blog beyond what it already does. Like I said earlier, AHE achieves its goals whether anyone reads it or not; it is, first and foremost, a space for me to write. Sure, I'll keep tinkering with the features (I'm still not entirely sure about the "What's New" section on the homepage), and maybe the design will change at some point, but I only ever wanted the design and features of AHE to support and facilitate the writing, and they do that pretty well. For now, the best thing I can do is keep writing. Maybe one day someone will read it and reach out.

So here's to our first year on AHE. With any luck, the first of many yet to come.