On personal websites

18 Nov 2024

I'm thinking about what I'm doing here. Just some meandering thoughts.

Before this was a Bearblog, it was a Zola static site, and before that, a Hugo static site. If we go far enough back, it was a Greymatter site. (Although my first websites were built on Geocities & Angelfire.)³

I was looking at my Pinboard and realized that I've collected ~100 bookmarks of content management systems & static site generators... and I'm always curious whenever I discover a new one. (Like I said previously, I enjoy tinkering with blogs more than I like writing them.)

My fingers are getting itchy again after a few weeks of settling down here. I mentioned previously I wasn't sure how long I'd stick around — but I'm trying I want to. I even got the lifetime upgrade to bully motivate myself into staying. Sunk cost fallacy and all that. (It really works for me. It's why I go to the gym.)

I told my sister earlier that this was meant to be fun & I'll keep doing it until it's no longer fun. She commented before & commented again that she was surprised that I'm willing to make public posts. She cautioned, "The internet isn't like what it was before." I agreed, but informed her no one looks at this, so maybe it's fine. Plus, I'm blocking all the search bots. If it's not fine, then I'll just disappear as quickly as I appeared.¹

I read this lovely perspective on personal websites: I am a poem I am not software.

Here's another: I thought you were a designer. Why does this site look so… unfinished?

At work, my days are made up of decisions that benefit both the people who use my creations and the people who pay me to make them. On this website, all bets are off.

All bets are off. I could never write like this or design like this at work. I like that this is my space to be weird & use ampersands whenever I want to.