Its been three years with the content now for this place. I started the weblog over on the hosted wordpress and then moved things around a few times. I’ve used Drupal here and then moved back and forward and sideways. I even got this thing working with MovableType but I could never really tolerate it. There is just something big and bloated and difficult combined with a administrative interface that seems strung together with bailing wire, glue, and straw. I could never learn my way around.
Now, I’m sitting on this blog on my own Ubuntu powered Apache2 server. I own the server and it does mail, web, and a few other things. Linux just does these things well. I also run Dovecot and Postfix on it for mail and openvpn for vpn.
After three years of gently writing posts which appear in their chronological order, I’ve learned a few things about blogging:
- Don’t take it too seriously. Chances of me making it to the top 100 are not even in this universe and if they were I’d deny wanting it. Blogging is important but I don’t want or need to write “clued in” manifestos where I hop the train and ride to awareness. Where each post is adored and commented on and read and linked and relinked and reread. I have had a few posts with comments like my take on Linuxcare and Levanta and its passing. That’s cool! In fact, a number of old friends posted comments to the blogpost and I appreciate you guys taking the time to read my drivel.
- Blogging is habit-forming. I blog because I must. I feel the pressure raise and then its the five pound chicken/ten pound egg thing. I get constipated with words left unsaid, thoughts unexplicated, ideas lingering. I must blog.
- Blogging is not fun sometimes. I get bored with it and want a different thing. Sometimes, I want to stop; but then I get that full feeling and I know its not fun and I have this habit I must satisfy.
- Finally, blogging is just blogging. I’ve learned that its not some social fabric for me and its not raising some kind of consciousness that others can link to. No, its me being a part of a larger universal thing; but it is just me and I may fit and I may not. Its still blogging and I get chewy goodness from it but I want nothing more from it than what it gives me.
Someone asked me at work whether they should start writing weblogs. It took me a moment and I just stared at them and asked, “why would you want to do that?” If you cannot answer, then you should not be doing it. So embrace the years, watch the posts roll by but they are just that. I gather, capture, wonder, post. Will I ever tire of the never-ending dates and times arranged by this software? Probably not. Wordpress seems to get generally better as time goes by for me. Themes get nicer and widgets dress it up.
