There are ponts when you have to stop what you’re doing (or not doing) and tear everything up and start again. I’m considering whether or not this blog here needs a complete overhaul. Its current incarnation has been online since 2019 and – apart from a technical issue about 18 months ago – it’s kept going pretty well. I’ve maintained websites and blogs since the late 1990s and self-hosted since around 2010. Usually, something has technically gone wrong and I’ve been forced to reinstall and rebuild. This time it’s different. This time I have the feeling that I want to simple restart and revivify (I love that word!). I’m just not sure whether it’s what I want it to be. Originally, it was a sort of “hub” for things I was posting online a mix of blog, reviews, educational notes and writings. But I’ve never been satisfied by how it has operated and, as time has gone on, I’ve posted less and less. I tried to compensate for this by drawing in feeds from other places like Mastodon (microblogging) and Letterboxd (micro-film reviews) which have resulted in writing less here. It’s been hard also to reconcile the various stuff I’m interested in so I’ve increasingly ended up just posting about books, comics and the occasional album. Modern life – especially online – constantly pulls you in all directions and that’s what’s happened her to the point of inertia. Plus, my note-taking and writing is now 99% offline. I don’t keep notes or write with the purpose of posting online.
What I’m thinking about doing is stripping everything away and rebuilding from scratch. I’m inspired by Tracy Durnell’s Mind Garden where she combines regular weekly posting with “Big Questions” (personal projects), book reviews, music reviews, recipes and other stuff. Her site is conceptually more how I imagined this one to be six years ago. There are other considerations, too. For instance, this site manages to use something like 2gb+ of web space and I’d like to try trim that down. It’s also an opportunity to try out some other publishing options than WordPress. I need to think about it a little more, though, before I do anything drastic.
