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

Hey, I’m Linda. I grew up in Budapest in a Chinese family of four, heavily influenced by the 2000s internet. I was very interested in leaving home and ended up in the United Kingdom—all over, but with the most time spent in Edinburgh, Scotland. I got into design, sociology, and working in tech and startups. Then, I had enough of being a designer, working in startups, and living in the UK, so I left.

I moved to Berlin and started building a life that fits me more authentically. My interests change a lot, but the persistent ones have been: journaling with a fountain pen, being horizontal in nature, breathwork, and ambient music.

What’s the story behind your blog?

I was struck by a sudden need to write in public last year. I’d been writing in private but never felt the need to put anything online because I have this thing about wanting to remain mysterious. At least, that’s the story I was telling myself.

In hindsight, the ‘sudden need’ was more of a ‘wanting to feel safe to be seen.’ I also wanted to find more people who were like-minded. Not necessarily interested in the same things as me, but thinking in similar ways.

Through writing, I discovered that articulating your internal world with clarity takes time and that I was contributing to my own problems because I wasn’t good at expressing myself. I write about these kinds of realizations in my blog. It’s like turning blurriness and stories into clarity and facts. I also do the opposite sometimes, where I reframe experiences and feelings into semi-fictional stories as a way to release them. I enjoy playing in this space between self-understanding through reality and self-soothing through fantasy. I also just enjoy the process of writing and the feeling of hammering on the keyboard.

I wanted the blog to be formless and open-ended, so it didn’t have a name to begin with, and it was hanging out on my personal website. The name just kinda happened. I like the sound of the word “pond” and the feeling I get when I think of a pond. Then I thought: if I were a pond, what kind of pond would I be? A midnight pond. It reflects me, my writing, and the kind of impression I’d like to leave. It’s taken on a life of its own now, and I’m curious to see how it evolves. Nowadays, it seems I’m interested in writing shorter pieces and poems.

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

I get a lot of inspiration from introspection, often catalyzed by conversations with people, paragraphs from books, music, or moments from everyday life.

In terms of the writing process, the longer blogposts grow into being like this:

I’ll have fleeting thoughts and ideas that come to me pretty randomly. I try to put them all in one place (a folder in Obsidian or a board in Muse). I organically return to certain thoughts and notes over time, and I observe which ones make me feel excited.

Typically, I’ll switch to iA Writer to do the actual writing — something about switching into another environment helps me get into the right mindset. Sometimes the posts are finished easily and quickly, sometimes I get stuck. When I get stuck, I take the entire piece and make it into a pile of mess in Muse. Sometimes the mess transforms into a coherent piece, sometimes it gets abandoned.

When I finish something and feel really good about it, I let it sit for a couple days and look at it again once the post-completion high has faded. This is advice from the editors of the Modern Love column, and it’s very good advice.

I occasionally ask a friend to read something to gauge clarity and meaning. I like the idea of having more thinking buddies. Please feel free to reach out if you think we could be good thinking buddies.

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

Yes, I do believe the physical space influences my creativity. And it’s not just the immediate environment (the room or desk I’m writing at) but also the thing or tool I’m writing with (apps and notebook) as well as the broader environment (where I am geographically).

There’s a brilliant book by Vivian Gornick called The Situation and the Story: The Art of Personal Narrative and a quote in it: “If you don’t leave home you suffocate, if you go too far you lose oxygen.” It’s her comment on one of the example pieces she discusses. This writer was talking about how he couldn’t write when he was too close or too far from home. It’s an interesting perspective to consider, and I find it very relatable. Though I wouldn’t have arrived at this conclusion had I not experienced both extremes.

My ideal creative environment is a relatively quiet space where I can see some trees or a body of water when I look up. The tools I mentioned before and my physical journal are also essential to me.

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

My site is built with Astro, the code is on GitHub, and all deploys through Netlify. The site/blog is really just a bunch of .md and .mdx files with some HTML and CSS. I code in VS Code.

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

I wouldn’t change anything about the content or the name. Maybe I would give the tech stack or platform more thought if I started it now? In moments of frustration with Astro or code, I’ve often wondered if I should just accept that I’m not a techie and use something simpler. It’s been an interesting journey figuring things out though. Too deep into it, can’t back out now.

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?

The only running cost I have at the moment is the domain which is around $10 a year. iA Writer was a one-time purchase of $49.99. My blog doesn’t generate revenue.

I don’t like the idea of turning personal blogs into moneymaking machines because it will most likely influence what and how you write. But — I am supportive of creatives wanting to be valued for what they create and share from an authentic place. I like voluntary support based systems like buymeacoffee.com or ko-fi.com. I also like the spirit behind platforms like Kickstarter or Metalabel.

I started a Substack earlier this year where I share the longer posts from my blog. I’m not sure how I feel about this subscription thing, but I now use the paywall to protect posts that are more personal than others. I’ve come across a lot of writing I enjoy though and connected with others through writing.

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

Here are a few I’ve been introduced to or stumbled upon:

• Lu’s Wikiblogardenite — Very real and entertaining blog of a “slightly-surreal videos maker and coder”.
• Romina’s Journal — Journal of a graphic designer and visual artist.
• Maggie Appleton’s Garden — Big fan of Maggie’s visual essays on programming, design, and anthropology.
• Elliott’s memory site — This memory site gives me a cozy feeling.
• Where are Kay and Phil? — Friends documenting their bike tours and recipes.

Interesting, no-longer-active blogs:

• brr — Blog of an IT professional who was deployed to Antarctica during 2022-2023.
• The late Ursula K. Le Guin’s blog — She started this at the age of 81 in 2010.

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

I like coming across sites that surprise me. Here’s one that boggles my mind, and here’s writer Catherine Lacey’s website.

There’s also this online documentary and experience of The Garden of Earthly Delights by Jheronimous Bosch that I share all the time, and Spencer Chang’s website is pretty cool.