If we’re looking for a role model in the art of the blog, look no further than Blaise Pascal

Walter Mosley, like many literary heavyweights, delivers the old warhorse of writing advice: write every damn day. Rain or shine, joy or existential despair, sit down and put words on the page. It’s less about inspiration than it is about keeping the creative battery from corroding in the garage while your ambitions collect dust. Steven Pressfield echoed this doctrine in The War of Art, a self-help sermon for writers who need a firm kick in the discipline.

But daily writing in the digital age isn’t what it used to be. Now it comes with a side of existential nausea. The modern writer doesn’t just write—they publish. Immediately. Publicly. Desperately. A blog here, a TikTok monologue there, and boom—you’re not creating, you’re performing. You’re not nurturing your authentic voice; you’re pumping caffeine into your avatar and hoping the algorithm throws you a bone. And let’s be clear: the algorithm rewards extremity, outrage, and theater. The bigger the spectacle, the better the reach. Welcome to the Faustian Bargain of digital authorship.

In this deal with the devil, we don’t trade our souls for knowledge—we trade nuance for engagement. We sculpt our “brand” to fit the machine. Our subject matter isn’t what haunts us—it’s what trends. Our tone isn’t our voice—it’s caffeinated shouting with a faux-therapist smile. We might monetize. We might even go viral. But then what? We’ve spent our creative life howling into a dopamine feedback loop. Is this writing? Or is it a slow, glittery death of the self?

To be clear, branding isn’t inherently evil. Mark Leyner is a brand. So is Annie Dillard, Toni Morrison, and T.C. Boyle. Their work pulses with personality—yes—but also rigor, substance, and voice. They didn’t let style drown out content. They didn’t slap their face on a thumbnail and shout into the void about “7 Ways to Hack Your Purpose.” Influencers, on the other hand, are often pure surface: style with no skeleton, affect with no architecture.

So what happens if you’re writing online without chasing likes, shares, or ad revenue? Are you just journaling in public? Writing as catharsis masquerading as productivity? Possibly. But that’s not inherently shameful. Writing as therapy is fine—as long as it’s therapy with syntax. Catharsis isn’t the enemy; incoherence is. Even in the trenches of personal expression, we owe our readers (and ourselves) clarity, pace, and craft.

If we’re looking for a role model in the art of the blog, look no further than Blaise Pascal. His Pensées—a blog centuries ahead of its time—is a fragmented, pithy, and piercing meditation on the human condition. Each entry was brisk, barbed, and brimming with insight. He didn’t need an algorithm. He had a point of view.

In this sense, blogging today can be a return to Pascal, not a descent into performance art. A blog can be a sketchbook of thought, a lab for style, a home for unfinished beauty. But only if we resist the pull of artificial relevance and write for something—anything—more enduring than a trending sound clip.