Nowadays, we have instant access to the internet from our pockets, but twenty years ago things were completely different. We quickly transitioned from the dial-up modem noises of connecting to the World Wide Web to creating personal blogs and becoming content creators. It’s amusing to reflect on how much we believed the internet was taking something from us — making us “disconnected from reality” — when services like WhatsApp were still a distant dream. My high school best friend and I became pen pals, sending letters to each other. Yes, we could have just texted, but I suppose we were a bit romantic.

In the early 2000s, we used to go online to escape reality, but nowadays it seems we’re escaping reality altogether. Still, we don’t need to choose. Being part of the last generation raised in analog gave us some bad habits, but it also taught us that we can exist in the middle ground.

Today, living in that middle ground, I sometimes contemplate disconnecting completely. But it’s also there — through nostalgia — where I feel the pull to start what may become the spiritual successor of my teenage blog. After the nostalgia trip through the early-2000s internet, it’s time to reflect on what this is and why now.

What happened in the past twenty years?

During the summer of 2007, I was almost completely offline. Laptops were still the next big thing, and I had just graduated. By the time I went back online, I had already immersed myself in a new reality far from the life I left behind.

Throughout the years that followed, I kept writing — each time more timidly — as I studied artistic photography, learned the emotional rollercoaster of relationships, and began globetrotting: visiting new cities, exploring new cultures, moving abroad. The world felt different.

I left behind routines and a culture I never fully connected with, embarking on adventures to explore foreign ones. I still sought creative outlets. I designed several websites I never launched; once created, I quickly moved on to the next project. But one unfinished business always remained: creative writing.

Although it was something I always loved, it was the creative outlet I invested in the least. During the pandemic, my will to write became evident. I wrote about that last flight, about being locked down in Los Angeles. Back home, on the balcony overlooking the empty beach, I slowly introduced journaling and storytelling into my daily life, transitioning from a bullet journal to Notion — until it didn’t feel safe anymore, and I began jumping back and forth between Day One and Notion.

I longed to create my own universe again, to pen my experiences, thoughts, and emotions. I didn’t want to simply write about my day — that was journaling. I wanted a more intimate creative space. The idea stayed in the back of my mind as working from home faded and the return to the office approached. Then, one morning earlier this summer, as if moved by an external force, I rushed to research blogging. Before I realized it, I had purchased a hosting plan and the same domains I used to own twenty years ago. But was blogging still “it”?

What does blogging look like today?

With all the domains and hosting ready, I started writing — so much that I had to begin piling future ideas and half-drafted stories. But I wondered whether blogs were a thing of the past and whether I was a dinosaur in a distant flying-car future.

Blogging is apparently still alive, although the diaristic blogging we used to do has transitioned into other formats and platforms like Instagram. Blogs have become something big: you’re expected to have a niche, SEO tools, and long bodies of text that often read like they were written by anything but a human. Guru-like people flattering their wallets under the pretext of helping.

Can I be honest with you? I never read those blogs when I came across them. Maybe I’m wrong, and someone puts genuine effort into repetitive paragraphs that could be summarized in two lines. But in that noisy chaos, I also found authentic voices — not SEO-inflated text to drive traffic, but human writing.

WordPress has done a great job of keeping up with the times and retaining talent on its platform. Through its Reader discovery feature, I found voices of all sorts: content with a clear niche, great takeaways, fantastic stories, and personal takes on social and current affairs. Humbled by those stories, my older self found this new approach far more appealing. That envisioned intimate space could coexist in today’s landscape.

And those domains I bought? They were the same ones I used to own twenty years ago, when my childish Spanish voice dreamt in English. It was time to reassess and evolve with the times myself.

The birth of Gunecan

As I grew older, there was a man who embodied what I thought was the perfect male physique and personality. This ideal never interfered with real life; it simply acted as a guiding reference point. That north pole went beyond the physical — it became the idea of who I was and who I wanted to grow into. Gunecan represented that idea, seeded at the end of my blogging years and flourishing in the years that followed.

I was no longer that teen. My native language worsened as English became my primary linguistic model. I lived between worlds and realities, never fully fitting into a single one — exactly as I have been most of my life. My present self writes from that in-between place, navigating the world while becoming the man I dream of.

It would be wrong to say that I long for a different life than the one I have. I’m lucky to say I’ve achieved everything I dreamt of: living different forms of life, doing completely different things, constantly challenging myself to step out of my comfort zone.

Now I’m ready to start this new blogging chapter, embodying Gunecan as my north pole while learning to navigate life in my thirties. I invite you to follow me on this journey. I don’t promise consistency — but at the very least, I will be authentically myself.

Here’s to Gunecan, the spiritual successor of my teenage blog.