Miscellaneous

19 Dec, 2023

I'm going to run out of titles for these types of posts. I've used "Saturday Thoughts" and "Sunday Thoughts" - I'm saving the other days of the week for when I really want to use them. Sometimes I feel like not using a title at all; but then how would Bear Blog generate a URL? Is there a way to make a URL but not put a title on the post? Hmm. 🤔

I have been thinking about writing a post for a few days now, but just haven't been in the right mindset. Also, busy with work. Right now I have a few minutes of downtime between tasks, so I'm taking advantage and starting this draft. Anyway, since I don't have anything particularly unified to write about, here are some miscellaneous thoughts about some things that have been on my mind.

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Pulp Fiction (tiramisu)

I read this one on the weekend, and as usual another thought-provoking post from tiramisu. The part I focused on was about gift-giving, and how some people dislike receiving gifts related to their hobby:

If I’m super into topic X and you’re not, there’s a good chance whatever you get will either not be of interest (e.g. bad beans) or just redundant (I can only use so many mugs or grinders).¹

You know what? I totally get it. I occasionally experience this with a few things: books, writing, etc. The only thing with writing is that other than being picky about the type of notebook I want, you can't really receive too many notebooks - especially not at the rate that I'm using them lately. With books, I will usually give what I receive a chance. If I'm truly not interested after starting it out, I'll stop reading.

One thing I would suggest, though: if someone you know is just starting to get into a new hobby, I don't think it's a bad thing to gift someone things that would help them get started with their new hobby.

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Who am I writing for (Meadow)

I saved this in Notion along with a note suggesting I write about this post, but unfortunately Past Me wasn't great at documentation. I don't know exactly what it was about this post that I wanted to comment on / respond to.

After reading it again, I suspect what happened was that I could see myself in Meadow's past:

All my previous attempts at keeping a blog fell squarely on the second point (mainly informative or wannabe-philosophical posts), and they didn't go very well. I found my motivation quickly plummeted and I was getting little satisfaction out of the content I was creating.

For the longest time I chased blog niches to try to get eyes on my writing and eventually build up an audience to generate revenue...but I'm not interested enough in the long game to do that. I would still love for more people to read what I write, but I'm primarily in it to share what I'm writing. I'll probably add a "buy me a coffee" link at some point but I'm dragging my feet on that one.²

Every now and then a thought still pops into my mind, "Hey, why don't I start a newsleter?" And I have to squash it down and remind myself of the following:

1. I have a space to write, and it's now here, on Bear Blog. I don't need to start a newsletter. If people want to subscribe, they'll find my RSS feed.
2. I start and stop things in too many places. I'm trying to consolidate my efforts into as few places as possible.

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Website doubts

I'm seriously considering blowing up my 11ty efforts in building a personal website and designing the site from scratch. Using 11ty makes sense for my gaming blog - it IS a blogging platform. But in designing my personal page, I realize that it is a basic landing page. I don't need 11ty to put that together.

Yes - it DOES make putting it together simpler; instead of re-coding the navigation on every page I can put that basic boilerplate stuff as a template and just write content. I can use mark-down to make writing pages easier.

But realistically, I think I only have three pages: the "home" page (which doubles as an "About" page), links to my writing, and links to my podcasts. I have been toying with a list of recent blog posts (from this blog's RSS feed) but it doesn't seem necessary. All that to say: is it really that tedious to have to re-write header information and links? I can create all of that as a template .html file anyway. For three pages - big whoop. And then I could update the website from anywhere should I need to.

I feel like it would be more of a learning experience (and a fun "back to basics") to put things together without the help of a blogging platform.

Want to get in touch with me? Your best bet is Mastodon: @srgower. I'm also on Bluesky and Threads, and also Twitter/X if you prefer.

#thoughts