Would you call yourself an editor of your blog? I prefer the word writer.
Meta
The thing with debugging issues is that sometimes, the systems just don’t want to work. Especially late at night. If it isn’t a life or death sort of issue, just sleep over it.
Why? Why do I sign up for upgrading platforms late in the night? My sleep has been ruined a lot many times than what I am proud of. Sigh!
After a two-weeks break away from all the timelines, it was good to scroll through a couple of them today.
The break also made me realise that I have made a few new friends online, especially from the wonderful community at Micro.blog. I missed the interactions with these folks. Each one of them is a brilliant creator in his or her own way. Bloggers. Photographers. Writers. They all are natural. They all inspire me.
I feel at home here, feel am part of this community. Not a feeling many platforms online can cultivate within you. It’s wonderful to be back and read through the lively discussions. The growth hasn’t dented the warmth, something that is pretty palpable here.
Isn’t it fascinating that there are two services so similarly named, Discourse and Discord, being used by different platforms as discussion boards for their users? I always get confused between the two. I like one, I hate the other.
By the way, here’s a meta update which I forgot to put out there. I have ended the trial of the Glass app — the subscription price was hefty for my usage. I am not a photographer, you see. So, I did not fit there. At the same time, I decided to pay for Ulysses and Reeder. I love both the apps, and they reduce that slight friction from the two activities that I love doing.
I updated my Now page today, the weekly reminders help. Sure, I don’t update the page every week. But I am doing that way frequently than what I would otherwise.
Some newsletters are just too long for my liking. I can read long ones if they are genuine essays, someone sharing what they are or have gone through. Some life experiences. Or something of interest for them. But when you curate, and still have hoards of links to some external content, I am not in. In short, long texts are fine for me. Not 100s of links.
When you say you curate, you should curate. Not include link to everything that you and your friends read.
If you were to take a guess, when do you think the term “microblogging” was first coined? Another term that was gaining popularity the same year was “vodcast”. I am relieved it didn’t catch on — neither the term nor the media format.
I modified my homepage today to group posts by date and sort in chronological order in the day. Why? I never liked the reverse-chronological order across.
It’s crazy how one’s mind works. Here are two posts separated by 4 years. I recently published one a couple of weeks back. I had published another in 2017. Both the posts talk about a similar observation, about the constant fight between the coder and a writer in me. It reads in such a similar manner. The choice of words, the structure, the flow. It should be pretty apparent to anyone who reads it that both the posts come from the mind. From the same author.
Surprisingly, when I wrote the recent post, I had no clue that I had written about the same topic earlier some time. In a way, then, the adage that “there’s no original work being written, but just rewrites” is not that far off.
Ulysses looks to be a really great app for writing all types of posts. Sure, it does not work cross platform - something I dearly wish it did. But I have iA Writer for that. My big problem at this point is I have no clue what editors I am paying for currently, for which platforms and in what form - subscriptions from Google Play Store, App Store or I have them out right purchased. I need to sort this mess up pretty soon. Sigh!
I am reading many people's writing process today and am absolutely stunned at how simple my writing needs are. I don't write drafts after drafts in any tool. All my drafts are one line ideas in my notebook or saved articles with tags "to-write". I find time for writing and complete a post about an idea or article.
For that matter, most of my posts are spontaneous -- I get a thought and I put it down into a post. I don't insert too many images, individual or as part of the posts. Sure, there are times when I need to spend time on researching or explaining some projects that I am working on. Or when I am writing a fiction. Such posts are very rare, though (and continue to become even rarer as the time goes on).
Plus, I like writing in Markdown. But I am not too attached to the language. I could very well go about writing posts after posts without using any of the Markdown syntax. The most I do is emphasize a word or a line. It won't matter to me how I do it. That said, I continue to enjoy writing my post in Markdown editors and would do that wherever I get a chance.
There was a time when all my posts originated in some text editor installed on my laptop. But that's not the case any more. Most of the posts that I write are in a portal of sorts hosted on web - mainly Quill. (I wish Micro.blog had a better writing interface, though. The current one is too basic and doesn't work well for longer posts). On a mobile device, I only write microposts and I would post them from some Micropub client -- I use Micro.blog apps (Gluon or Dialog) or Indigenous.
All in all, I have realized I have a simple publishing workflow. I open a web or mobile app, put down my thoughts and hit publish. So, what use do I have for the text editors any more?
I dislike the fact that I have published very few long form posts recently. It's as if I can only think in micro form. Should it matter? I don't think so. But I have slowly come to the realization that I am writing with one eye on the character count. It's really foolish of me to do that. But I do this subconsciously.
Somewhere deep down, a thread also continuously evaluates how the post is going to look in a timeline -- the only one where I believe it matters would be Micro.blog. Again, it's foolish. But I have realized it affects me. If it didn't, I would be publishing more posts with titles.
I need to bring my mind out of the habit to character check my posts.
I am happy with the format that I’ve settled on for my newsletter Slanting Nib. A regular personal update followed by the recommended reads. Plus a colorful artwork from India. It’s simple enough for me to curate and I feel should be clean enough for the readers to follow.
“The happiness of loneliness” - such a curious phrase from my yesterday’s post. I really enjoyed reading this one a day after. I like to reflect on my posts from past. There’s on this day for the yearly reflection; for the daily one, I’ve setup an email digest. Tinkering time.
The reminder that Patrick Rhone inspired me to set seems to be working. This is a second update to my /now page in the last one month. Nice!
Revisiting 2020 through the /now page
I updated my /now page today after a long time. I usually maintain a thought's archive as part of the page for the updates that are no longer relevant. The idea behind is revisiting
the thoughts that once were at the top of my mind is another way for me to retrospect.
Today I've reset that section for 2021. And below is an unadulterated list of the thought archive from 2020 -- so in a way a snapshot (incomplete, sure) of the year that went by.
- I’m trying to get into a habit of regular meditation. I want to give it a chance again.
- I'm in love with the Hamilton soundtrack. I keep going back to it every now and then.
- Study Café Album on Spotify has been my go-to album every time I want to focus. If that fails, the real café ambient noise from Coffitivity does the job.
- I have started writing frequently now. The simpler writing workflow with WordPress is helping.
- Need to get the backup solution for posts (probably in WordPress) addressed.
- Focus on deciding on the format, the frequency and the tone of the newsletter.
- Where would my blog go next? Or will it stay here? It would most probably not be WordPress
- I want a better writing interface. Or maybe not? Why do I want to create something perfect myself?
- Need to get to the improvements planned for Wall.
- Read. Read. Read. Write. Write. Write.
- I need to finish the couple of books I had started reading in the last month
- Implement a micropub client. Get anything working. Without UI. Dropped the idea
- Getting used to the new normal.
- Write about and share details about Wall. Feedback and issues.
- Get IndieLogin working -- just been too long now
- Get distracted with the side projects, again. IndieWeb's done.
- Start reading and writing again
- Stop procrastinating items from *must-do* list
- Fix issue with webmentions from Brid.gy
- Send webmentions to target on replies/likes
- Support for updates in blotpub
- Decision on upcoming nearby travel
- Handle crossposting to Twitter and Mastodon for longer posts
- Style webmentions section to my liking. It is too bloated in the current form
- Start `\now` page to be updated regularly
- Consolidate all my online content onto a single place (*most probably blot*)
- Move old content from Hugo to archive (a Hugo site)
- Change stuff around
If you maintain a /now page like I do, what do you write in there? What’s a good enough update? I keep swinging between very text-heavy and too terse – I haven’t found the right balance yet.
The first “promise” Ghost 4.0 makes is “Turn your audience into a business.”. The first “feature” that it calls out is the dashboard “with detailed stats on audience engagement and business growth”. The answer to my question is clearly not for a blogger like me.
Another day when I think about all the meta stuff around my blog and how I swing between complete control over the setup and no control at all. Another day when I admire the folks who have custom-made solutions for each part. That level of dedication’s not trivial.
MailChimp seems to have a good RSS-to-Email option – this should work for the simple need that I have. Sure, the whole campaign building experience makes me a bit queasy, but not going to let it worry me. Time for trial.
Here’s a word cloud of my posts created in 2008 – I had been writing for around 2 years then. I find it funny that even then I wrote the most about “blog”. Meta commentary never goes out of fashion.
