So yeah, hi. Hello. Ahem... Good to see you again! It's been a while, and I hope things have been going well for you.

Not so long ago, my second son was born, and I stopped writing here. I kept journaling most days, whenever I managed to convince myself to get out of bed early enough, but I didn't feel like I had the time or mental energy to consistently write blog posts, keep up with what my favorite bloggers were saying, or even answer emails!

But things have cooled down a bit now. My new son is almost four months old, and he's very cute 🤗 He's also starting to require less energy from us and is transitioning from being an energy sink into a wellspring of smiles and laughter.

I feel like I'm back in a state where things are somewhat stable, and I have the energy and space to get up earlier than everyone else and blog a bit. Who knows? I might even find the will to exercise during some of these mornings. We'll see.

I'm not sure what my blog will be about going forward. It might not change that much from what it was before, or maybe it will. I felt like it was hard for me to write since my previous self-image was so solidified that I found it hard to move on to other things or (as is the case now) start writing again. This is the reason I'm writing this whole post—to break the ice, as they say.

Is it weird that this resistance I feel towards blogging again feels a bit like social anxiety? One would think it doesn’t matter, as, firstly, you really don’t know who I am, and second, it’s my site/space, and I can do whatever I want. I guess this is one of the reasons I felt that writing on my blog constantly was so good for me. If things were to cool down, then it would all become awkward, as it has.

Maybe a quick catch-up is in order now. What’s new in my life since my last post? Well, my new son is at the top of that list, along with learning to know him and watching, open-mouthed, as my oldest turns out to be the best big brother in the world. I’ve also been reading a lot of Ram Dass, and wondering about my faith (or total lack thereof) and what it means to be spiritually fulfilled. I’ve been thinking about the things we give up when our minds are obsessed with scientific rigor. I’ve also managed to pull myself away from compulsively playing games on my phone and realized that the reason for this was that I didn’t feel very good internally and was looking for external pleasure and distraction. I’ve also (quite recently) started experimenting with microdosing THC every now and then as an experiment, and it has worked quite well, though not how I expected (I might write a post about this).

I’ve wanted to get back into blogging for a while now, but I struggled to take the final step. The final push came some days ago in the form of an email asking about my Guestbooks project. In that email, the sender mentioned micro.blog, which led me down a multi-day rabbit hole exploring the platform and its implications. I created a site on micro.blog and was planning to move my blog over there, but in the end, I decided to create a custom site and host it myself (more on this later). Still, I would recommend the platform to anyone! It is very neat and has a lot of features, but my favorite thing is the ideas the creator of the platform has about online interactions and what a healthy social media site would look like¹. Too bad I’m not a social media user, or I would definitely love to use the 'social' aspects of micro.blog that they’re developing. Still, I might continue to support them monetarily just because it’s such a cool and wholesome project.

So, about my site...

I used to be a longtime user of Bear. I really like Bear, and the community that has formed around it is one of the best, most loving, understanding, compassionate, and beautiful I’ve ever seen on the internet. I attribute this in no small part to the efforts that Herman (the creator) has made to set the tone, and tirelessly ensure the platform is free from spam sites. I’m extremely grateful for these platforms, as they’ve provided a fertile ground on which both old and new blogs can grow and flourish.

I had absolutely no reason for switching, except for the fact that I was bumping against Bear’s minimalism. I had things I wanted to do but couldn’t. It’s the nature of such a platform that it can only allow you to change so many things. And that’s a good thing! Especially for the kind of user who doesn’t want to deal with technical stuff or just wants a place to write and not think about it that much.

I know I don’t talk much about it, but I love programming. Code runs in my veins and beats in my heart. I had so many ideas over time for things I wanted to add to my blog but couldn’t. For me, the site itself is as much an expression of art as whatever I write in my posts. And so, I’ve decided to migrate away from Bear and create my own custom web page.

Around a year ago, I started toying with Astro and absolutely fell in love with it. I just personally find it so clean, intuitive, and easy to use! It took me very little time to reimplement my Bear blog in Astro, and have it look pretty much exactly the same², with some extras. I imagine that as time goes on, I will start to deviate more and more. I’ll let it flow as it will.

Another reason I’ve hesitated so much in migrating to my own site is that it would mean the loss of Bear’s discover page, which I found to be an excellent way to improve the discoverability of your blog. Yeah, I know—I’m a sucker for numbers, and I shouldn’t worry so much about them. I try not to, and my move away from Bear is also, in part, an attempt to separate myself from this aspect. Though I have to admit, I’ve been weak, and for now, I’ve added privacy-respecting analytics³ to my site.

So... yeah... I think my blog is now evolving into my site (which contains a blog).

See you around ~ 🍀

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Footnotes

1. If you're interested in these, you can look him up on your favorite search engine. Also, I would recommend you check out his book about Indie Microblogging. I haven’t read all of it yet, but I’m finding the first few sections really interesting and on point. ↩

2. If you would like to do something similar, I would be happy to help—just reach out. I’m thinking maybe I can set up some sort of Astro template that looks and feels just like Bear, though I haven’t really searched to see if there’s one already. ↩

3. Or better said, I will add analytics to my site. I’m still evaluating whether I want to use tinylytics (nicer, made by a well-known indie web creator) or umami (less nice, but has a much more generous free plan and is open source). ↩