First website, first post
I'd played with the idea of having a personal site and/or blog for a while now, but was always put off by the work. Choosing a domain, finding a host, learning their software, choosing a theme, the fees, etc. All that before you even get to content; what would I put there? What does one do with a personal site? What's the point?
But at the same time, social media doesn’t feel appropriate for long-form writing, at least to me. My posts are chaotically stupid. Can’t pollute that with boring stuff. Where social media is fun and ephemeral, like texting your friends, a blog is more like a journal. Sure, you can write a novel over the course of like, a hundred posts (because character limits), but it’ll get swept away by the ever-scrolling feed as soon as you hit “publish” (or whatever). So blogs still have a place, and there are things I want to say without throwing a wall of text in my poor followers’ faces. They already tolerate so much from me. Also, having a website feels like staking a claim in the wilderness of the Internet and building a little homestead. As long as you pay your bills, it’ll outlast the shiny new social media thing these ad companies pump out. And it will be yours!
So, as it turns out, static websites are still a thing, and there are tools to help you build them. That was another obstacle down on this journey to making a damn website, because I’m sure as hell not becoming a web developer. I already have beef with the bloated, unresponsive modern web, and zero desire to get involved with that. There’s also a bit of nostalgia in me for the days of like, Geocities, and kids showing off their silly little sites they made in their middle school Computer Science elective. That’s me now. I’m the kid having fun slaving over a little nothing site. Except I’m not writing HTML by hand (mostly), I’m learning to use a very smart and very difficult-for-my-feeble-mind-to-comprehend piece of software that writes HTML for me.
The final straw was when someone on social media encouraged me to make a blog in response to me being like, oh, if I had a blog, I’d write about this there. I took it as a sign, put on my big boy pants, and here we are. I’d say something like, “let’s hope I stick with this,” but I’m very stubborn, so I will out of spite if nothing else.