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A fresh start

A fresh start
Photo by Михаил Павленко / Unsplash

My content creation cadence on my personal sites has slowed over recent years. Part of this is priorities--starting a family and the excitement of new kids has pushed plenty of things to the side. Wouldn't trade that for the world!

But part of it was distraction

After my early days of blogging (Blogger, others), I moved to Wordpress and never looked back. I self-hosted, curated some great plug-ins, and appreciated the control I had over every aspect of how things came together. That became a distraction.

Every time I'd think about writing something, I'd get distracted about the optinmal way to deliver that post, categorize, and even re-work the site to accommodate each new piece of content. That was distracting and unnecessarily burdened

And part of it was an aversion to social media

My blog at its best has been creative outlet where I could share interesting things. I started doing more of this on social media platforms, but got pretty disenchanted and all but quit social media in the late 2010's. When I turned back to my blog, I felt like if I posted, I'd have to also engage in the social media game to a degree I don't want to. In hindsight, I was wrong, but that won't stop me from righting the ship.

So the new beginning starts here

With my web hosting package up for renewal soon (but not too-soon), I'm making a clean break. I'm simplifying by:

  • Consolidating sites - I have an embarassing number of web domains and separate sites, databases, and configuration. I'm simplifying by going down to one. I'll lose some content and organic traffic in the process, but I'll live with it.
  • Using a different platform - so I'm not tempted to tweak and control a zillion little things in the technical workflow
  • Limiting myself to a standard, well-tested theme - so I can do the writing I enjoy, instead of concerning myself with every layout and design decision
  • Moving up the technology stack - so I'm not burdened with all of the maintenance I've done myself

Come along with me on the journey

Part of the consolidation means that I'll be retiring old feed links and email subscriptions. Those who were receiving emails have heard from me about the change, and may have already subscribed.

For everyone else, use the Subscribe link to get my posts automatically.