Dalton Mabery

This week on the People and Blogs series we have an interview with Dalton Mabery, whose blog can be found at dltn.io.

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

I'm Dalton Mabery. I used to be a professional video editor and designer, but I'm currently in my first semester of law school. I was born in Missouri but I moved to Northern California when I was four. When I'm not studying for school, I'm either reading history books, writing, running, playing golf, or on a walk with my wife and dog.

Before law school, I was the Digital Creator and Designer at Farnam Street. While there, I produced a podcast and its YouTube channel, edited and animated videos for online courses, ran social, and did various design and marketing tasks.

What's the story behind your blog?

I love history and I noticed that most of the influential figures in history had some sort of publishing habit—Theodore Roosevelt and Winston Churchill wrote biographies; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was a prolific essayist and writer before he became a U.S. Supreme Court Justice. (In fact, we were just assigned an excerpt from one of Holmes' most famous books, The Common Law, in class!) Other notable figures either wrote prolifically in journals and diaries or published in magazines. Creating a blog was my way of following in their footsteps.

When I first started, the domain name was daltonmabery.com, and it still is. In 2022, after I saw Derek Sivers' domain (sive.rs), I liked the idea of having something shorter so I purchased dltn.io. Both domains currently point to the site.

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

I usually blog about ideas that help me think better, see things in a new way, or help develop my worldview. Most of the ideas come from throw-away sentences in books or podcasts that I think are profound. (Gather intellectual scraps to shape ideas of your own.) My post "Don't Create a Horse Storm" is one of those examples. I read that in the epilogue of Dead Wake by Erik Larson and I thought it was so interesting. The specific example in the book wasn't about anger or our reactions to things, but that was where I landed with the idea after thinking, "Wow, this would make a great illustration. I wonder how this would work..." That led me to think about how our reactions to situations can often make the situation worse, thereby creating a horse storm.

When I hear an idea I want to blog about:

I typically have two drafts: the rough draft and then the final version. I write free-flowing at first, and then go back and edit the words. When I'm done, I publish it. I don't have anyone proof read my posts. (It's my blog, not the New York Times!)

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

When I'm doing "deep work," I like working on my 13" MacBook Pro, instead of my Mac Studio connected to a 29" monitor. Something about the small screen so close to my eyes creates a tunnel vision effect that makes it easier to focus.

I usually listen to one of three playlists on Spotify: Brown Noise, Instrumental Study, or Studying Like Oppenheimer. (I admit that one's cheesy but it's good.) I can't do deep work if songs have words, but when I'm doing administrative work that doesn't require a lot of focus I like listening to All out 40s, 50s, or 60s on Spotify, my country mix playlist, or Logic radio.

I think physical space does influence creativity, but when people rely on it too much it becomes a crutch. Things like, "I couldn't write because I don't have my headphones," or, "I couldn't read because I didn't have my comfy chair while traveling," are usually just excuses to make people feel better about themselves for not doing the work. That said, when I study in the library at school, surrounded by hundreds—if not thousands of books—it gives me a unique energy that's hard to create elsewhere.

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

My blog has been through a few different tech iterations, mainly on the backend. I started using Contentful as CMS but there was too much friction involved in writing a new post and I didn't like that. I was a big fan of Notion at the time, so I switched to using Notion as a headless CMS and I thought that was the coolest thing ever.

I loved Notion, but I was beginning to like the idea of "owning" your online identity and was afraid of Notion either changing their API structure, or somehow just losing all of my content. So, I switched to using markdown files. I use Obsidian to take notes, and so I just use Obsidian to write posts as well.

Writing in markdown files isn’t the most convenient of options since there’s front matter to worry about, pushing to GitHub, dev environments, and all that fun stuff. So, I tried using WordPress as a headless CMS because I really liked how easy it was to just open a browser window and fire off a new post. But, again, I didn’t like the lack of “ownership.” I realized that the benefit of having a site built from scratch was that you can make it whatever you want it to be. So, if you don’t like the friction involved in using front matter, write it without front matter.

The site is built with NextJS and hosted on Vercel.

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

This is a really hard question for me to answer because about once a month I feel like scrapping everything and rebuilding my blog from scratch. When I first started, I debated having a name for my blog. I liked the idea that just hearing the name gave the reader some sense of what the site was about beyond just my actual name, but then I realized I want my blogging and writing to be a secondary product of what I do, not the primary product.

This is a fundamental idea I don't think people consciously think about, but they should: do you want your blog to be a creative endeavor that you might eventually build into a brand beyond yourself? Or do you want to work a full-time job in tech, academia, business, whatever, and have a blog be a personal repository of stuff you learn and ideas you want to think about and share. I don't think a blog has to be one or the other, but thinking about the question can help decide style, content, and so much more. If I could start over, I would have made that decision earlier.

I'd also say to pick a platform and stick with it, but I think that's impossible. Blogs are supposed to be fun! They're supposed to let us explore and see what's out there, so I say go crazy. (As long as you're still actually writing.)

I think it's important to remember that at the end of the day, all that matters is that words you wrote are on the internet for someone else to read. It doesn't matter how it's hosted, or what tech stack you use. Books don't become bestsellers because of the typewriter they were written on; they become bestsellers because of the words contained within. I think blogs are the same way.

That said, the benefit of building a blog from scratch is that there are absolutely zero limitations on what you can make it. It might be hard and time consuming, but it’s possible. A lot of the website builders out there let you do a lot, but they all have their own limitations. I realized this recently, as I checked out a few website builders in hopes it would help simplify the process and kept getting frustrated that it would get close to doing what I wanted, but never perfect.

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 monetizing personal blogs?

I use Vercel's free hobby plan to host my site, so hosting is free. I don't make money from my blog or run ads on my site. Eventually I'd like to have patrons who like my book notes enough support that somehow, but that's sometime down the line.

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

I have many, but I'll limit my suggestions to three:

Austin Kleon — He's consistently blogged for ten plus years. I love reading his posts because I usually get sent down a rabbit hole that talks about the same idea, or an idea tangentially related one, from a few years ago. He's been in the game so long, it would be cool to hear his thoughts on how he's approached blogging throughout the different phases of his career.

Noted by Jillian Hess — One thing I love reading about more than blogging is note taking, especially from Victorian-era geniuses. Hess is an academic and every week shares pictures and tactics from some of the world's most famous notetakers. I am happily a paid subscriber.

Normal Sport by Kyle Porter — I don't read a lot of sports journalism, but since I love golf, I never miss Kyle's takes. He's been working for CBS for a while and has grown his personal project/blog/newsletter, Normal Sport, into a full-fledged company. He never misses with his analysis and the newsletter is hilarious. It'd be interesting to hear how he's approached "blogging" for a company like CBS and how it's similar or different to his blogging for Normal Sport.

Most of the other bloggers I read have already been on P&B, so I'm looking forward to recommendations from others as the series continues.

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

I'll shamelessly plug my favorite page on my site, my book notes. I don't know if I'll keep blogging for my entire life, but I'll definitely keep reading books and sharing notes, quotes, and ideas from them. There are about 40+ books posted, and I have a backlog of about 40 more I'm slowly working my way through. (If you like history, I recommend reading The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson.)

I saw someone a few weeks ago share a quote in this section, so I'd like to leave you with one from a book I'm currently reading and loving, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, and one I read, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power by Jon Meacham:

"It's not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such a shape that when or if the opportunities come he is ready to take advantage of them."
—Theodore Roosevelt

"For [Thomas] Jefferson laziness was a sin. 'Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes it with so silent, yet so baneful, a tooth, as indolence,' he told one of his daughters. Time spent at study was never wasted. 'Knowledge,' Jefferson said, 'indeed is a desirable, a lovely possession.'"
— Jon Meacham