Today (July 19th) marks eight years since the Student Health and Wellbeing Blog at Flinders launched: https://blogs.flinders.edu.au/student-health-and-well-being/
Since 2017, it’s grown to 1,546 posts (as of today) — far more reliable and prolific than my personal blog (where you are now), which tends to disappear into the ether for long periods.
When I kicked it off, it was primarily about communicating wellbeing-related content to the Flinders community. News, promotion of services, alerting students to new programs, that kind of thing. That’s still at its core – a core communication channel for those of us working in wellbeing services.
But over the years, it’s also become something else:
- A place where I refine my own understanding of health, psychology, and behaviour change – I can go back to old articles and see how my thinking and knowledge has progressed.
- A platform that many of my current collaborators first encountered me through – students are the main subscribers to the content, but there is a significant number of staff who follow it as well and who have kindly let me know over the years.
- A kind of time capsule in which you can see the development of wellbeing services at Flinders – Flinders has made some great expansions over the years.
- An unambiguous record that I am actually doing something when I am at work 🤣
I don’t consider myself a particularly good blogger. Competent? Yes. Good enough to say what I need to say, most of the time. Lately, AI has helped me post more detailed content with greater regularity. It is like having an always-on collaborator. And I would say it has genuinely made the process a little more fun. I can take on more ambitious posts and achieve them in less time. For example, AI provided me a really nice set of prompts that triggered an extended reflection on loneliness that I don’t think would have happened without those prompts.
Interestingly though, looking back, my written voice has changed/is changing. Early on, there was more humour, more absurdity in my posts. It is maybe narcissistic to say this, but I sometimes go and read old posts and have a good laugh. Gareth of 2018 was kinda bonkers and naive in the best possible way. And if I am honest, I am trying to rediscover some of that, as I do notice that my more recent posts lean into the curmudgeonly or clinical/neutral. There’s a risk, as you write about something for an extended period of time that you start to take it a little too seriously. Mental health is a serious topic and it’s also hilarious, and every grade in-between.
Battle of voices aside, there’s a deep satisfaction in the frequency and longevity of the blog. And I was particularly proud this year when the blog became part of the foundation for our new wellbeing identity at Flinders: BetterU. That felt like a bit of a milestone, like the years of content and quiet persistence had laid useful groundwork and people saw and acknowledged that.
There are still things I’d love to improve. I’d love to feature more voices on the blog (i.e. staff and students who care about wellbeing) but I’ve learned blogging isn’t an easy format for everyone. Casual-yet-informative writing is rarer than I expected. That said, we’re now exploring ways to build a small team of contributors, including students on placement from health degrees. It’s a great idea on paper. Time will tell if it works in practice. I do like the idea of being a news overlord.
As far as content goes, interestingly, while my personal blog often leaves me unsure of what to write, I rarely have that problem with BetterU. For example, I was sitting down this morning going through my personal emails and scheduled about 4 posts for next week just on cool stuff I found.
Lately, I’ve really enjoyed writing research digests: taking a peer-reviewed paper, pulling out the key ideas, extracting actionable insights, and tying it back to real life. It feels like a format I can keep growing into, and given the sheer size of the literature, it’s basically a lifelong commitment. That format of post also helps keep the content on the blog grounded, so that I don’t disappear too much into my own whacky ideas and instead always have at least one foot in the literature.
In short: I’m proud of that blog. And I plan to keep it going for as long as I’m at Flinders.
Thanks to everyone who reads it, shares it, or has reached out because of it. Here’s to many more posts and maybe a return of the slightly unhinged Gareth who made some of the earlier posts more entertaining.
Dr Gareth Furber 