Cleaning House

TL;DR: I came to realize that while those 15 years of archives were meaningful to me, they were holding me back. I stagnated, and eventually quit writing altogether.

When I started blogging 15 years ago, one of the things that drew me to it was the idea of speaking to an audience. The concept of “democratizing” publishing so that anyone could put their writing in front of the world was very appealing.

“I used to always think I had to have a reason to record my observations of the day, or even my emotions, but now I think simply being alive is more than enough reason.”

Over the years I pivoted from oversharing about my personal life to an intense focus on technical content. I tried to split the difference, and felt that each side was distracting from the other. My posting schedule also vacillated wildly, at times writing prolifically and then leaving the blog to lie fallow for months at a time.

I came to realize that while those 15 years of archives were meaningful to me, they were holding me back. I felt paralyzed by all that historical content, and unable to explore new ways of writing and presenting myself without factoring it in. I stagnated, and eventually quit writing altogether.

A few years ago, we moved from a large house to a very small apartment in a deliberate attempt to simplify our life. We got rid of half our belongings, and then did it again. We simplified, we reduced, and we made a lot of trips to Goodwill. And when we were done, I felt unburdened.

The time has come to do the same thing here. I backed everything up and moved on. I've deliberately simplified, and am now running this site on a hosted Ghost install. No more wasting time tweaking my blog configuration when I should be writing.

So, a fresh start. I've brought over only two posts from my old blog. Both cover information that isn't better represented elsewhere, and get decent traffic in my analytics. Next, I intend to add more technical content.

Stick around, there's good stuff coming.