I certainly share your nostalgia.
I've restarted my blog (https://jdsalaro.com) this year and, as painful as it is, I've chosen to go against the grain and ditch Medium and the like.
It always was just my place to nerd out and I noticed earlier this year that I had become disenchanted, but that taking action and not resignation was the solution. What if it doesn't rank, people don't enjoy my writing style or what about ads? So much thinking and not enough doing.
So far people have been extremely kind on Mastodon, Lemmy and, yes, Reddit; so I encourage you to create and interact with other creators.
I am not putting my bookmarks, including Blogs I enjoy, out in the open yet as I need to clean them up, but I certainly will at some point.
