This site has been great even if I'm not habitually writing, having a place like Tumblr once was for me, where I can just write for the sake of writing has been nice. Last year, I thought I might switch jobs and so I lazily redirected my personal site to a Squarespace instance because I figured something slick would be easier for promotional purposes.
It mostly did its job, but it was always stupid to have my site somewhere I was paying a monthly fee when I have 1) my own webspace 2) know how to build/deploy a website 3) use Github semi-regularly, etc., also the design of that service is really restrictive by design and that's irritating. Though it's useful for "building a site once and just updating it."
Anyway, I was resolved to stop paying months ago and kept getting bottlenecked because it's weird how it's somehow harder in 2022 to just throw up a boring website online than it used to be, because of the paradox of choice. (At least for me.) But I finally figured out what I wanted to do -- having a reintegrated blog with my personal site, after years of decoupling them -- but needed a boring JAMStack theme I could hack that didn't have so much complexity that I'd get annoyed.
I found something and I've been working on the migration over the past few days, and I should finish it today mostly because I'm tired of it. (Also, because the Squarespace subscription ends tomorrow I think so I need to redirect my main domain!)
Back when I tweeted more, I think blogging felt less relevant to me. I don't miss the stuff I didn't blog for years, and the few things that were worth keeping do have their own space online, but I do think it'd be nice to have a compendium of semi-serious thoughts to reflect on and a place to write talks. I've mostly hidden Medium posts over the year, deleted most old blogs and I don't have any major regrets about that -- most of that content isn't worth revisiting -- but I'm wondering if an omnibus presence that has a bit of everything (personal journey, updates on work, links to past talks) will serve me well moving forward. I'm betting that it will.
It mostly did its job, but it was always stupid to have my site somewhere I was paying a monthly fee when I have 1) my own webspace 2) know how to build/deploy a website 3) use Github semi-regularly, etc., also the design of that service is really restrictive by design and that's irritating. Though it's useful for "building a site once and just updating it."
Anyway, I was resolved to stop paying months ago and kept getting bottlenecked because it's weird how it's somehow harder in 2022 to just throw up a boring website online than it used to be, because of the paradox of choice. (At least for me.) But I finally figured out what I wanted to do -- having a reintegrated blog with my personal site, after years of decoupling them -- but needed a boring JAMStack theme I could hack that didn't have so much complexity that I'd get annoyed.
I found something and I've been working on the migration over the past few days, and I should finish it today mostly because I'm tired of it. (Also, because the Squarespace subscription ends tomorrow I think so I need to redirect my main domain!)
Back when I tweeted more, I think blogging felt less relevant to me. I don't miss the stuff I didn't blog for years, and the few things that were worth keeping do have their own space online, but I do think it'd be nice to have a compendium of semi-serious thoughts to reflect on and a place to write talks. I've mostly hidden Medium posts over the year, deleted most old blogs and I don't have any major regrets about that -- most of that content isn't worth revisiting -- but I'm wondering if an omnibus presence that has a bit of everything (personal journey, updates on work, links to past talks) will serve me well moving forward. I'm betting that it will.
