Migrating the blog
I'm currently on holiday in the Cairgorms National Park, staring out of a giant window onto some beautiful hills as the sun (finally) peeks through the clouds. And here I am updating my blog. In fact, not only am I updating it - I migrating it over to an entirely new service. That, apparently, is one of the ways I am choosing to spend my limited holiday time. But I'm doing so for a good reason, the same reason I'm on holiday - to free up space. Not server space or anything techy; brain space.
I spent a long time thinking about what the blog looked like, designing it in a way that attempted, at least, to encapsulate the spirit of the thing - playful, colourful, fun. In the last couple of weeks, however, I've been thinking a lot about clarity, and simplicity; about stripping back and figuring out what I actually need in order to put myself in a good position to make, do, write. This is linked to a redesign of my note-taking system, which I'll write about at some point (ooh! Fun! Hold onto your butts!), but the main reflection was this: I spend more time designing ways to do something than I do doing the actual thing. With note-taking, it was about folders and structure; with the blog, it's about what it looks like.
History has taught me that no matter how I design a blog, or a portfolio, I'm going to want to fiddle and change it in a few years time. I can also feel myself being pulled toward checking the analytics, stats and subscription numbers. All of that is time spent thinking about how other people perceive the work I do rather than making work. What I need, then, is things, tools, systems, that not only limit distractions, but limit my self-consciousness, my anxieties and tendency to compare myself to others. In short (as is often the case with me), I need to find ways to think less, and play more.
Enter Bear. It's a really robust, tidy blogging platform designed and hosted by an indie developer, the main priority of which is writing, and reading. Minimal bells and whistles, minimal design, minimal bloat. It took me about four minutes to think "this is what I need more of". Less noise, more space to think, make and do.
There's nothing wrong with tweaking and playing with things, of course; I'm sure anything I do now, blogwise, notewise, whateverwise, will develop and grow as I do. I had a lot of fun designing blog 1.0. And yes, I spent a couple of hours mucking around with some minor CSS on Bear to get it to look nice. I'm not implying I don't still want things to look pretty. But I think what's important is really understanding the why of doing anything - why am I writing the blog at all? Is it to have a nice looking website? Or is it to practice writing? If so, is what I'm building - and where I'm building it - a distraction, or something more positive? Does it add noise, or take it away?
In transferring my blog to Bear, I'm hoping to enforce an approach that prioritises the writing, rather than slipping into "noise". Yes, I'll probably end up sharing posts on LinkedIn, but that's not the point; that's another battle for another day. For now, I'm trying to be more conscious about how I work - how I play, really - and make decisions that more actively support that. For now at least, I'm hoping Bear will be a good start.
N.B - The double-edged sword of simplicity is there's no way of subscribing to the blog. If you want to subscribe, drop me an email and I'll email you when new posts come up. Or, better yet, go old school - bookmark me and check back in once in a while. You never know what I might be up to.