I have (once again) redesigned this blog, with the (renewed) hope of writing here regularly. As I type this I am pretty much done with the nuts and bolts of the structure and the taxonomies (categories and tags, etc).
That leaves the actual posts. I have about 60. I was tempted to just scrap them all to be honest, but that would just be silly especially since I have quite a few that deal with Waldenstrom and my journey with it, and I definitely want to keep those.
The problem is that the posts are disjointed, they don’t interline, there is no cohesive theme, the motivation of even blowing changed from year to year. Nevertheless, I have decided to proceed as follows:
- I will reformat posts as necessary, which is mostly limited to adding sub-headings if required and links to other posts
- I will not change any wording, even if the facts no longer apply, or the grammar is wrong, or my sentiment has changed.
- Sometimes, when I feel it is apt, I will include a “May 2020 update:”, which will link back to this post, to explain the process.
I should also say that re-reading these 60 posts is not necessarily an easy or even fun process. I can place each post in the context of my life at the time that it was written, and then review that sentiment within my current circumstances and the life changes I experienced, especially over the past 3 years. Some of that has made me feel really sad. But it is a gentle reminder that it’s not over until it’s really over, and yes, it probably all ends well in the end, and if it is not well, it is not the end 🙂
Moving forward
I don’t want to be to prescriptive about what this blog should be, or what type of things I am going to write here. I’ll see how it goes. But the original sentiment of wanting a place that I can refer back to in future years to reminisce and track progress still stands.
One thing that I am going to be more conscious of is taking my own photographs, rather than opting to use unsplash.com or similar sources. Using other people’s photos on a personal blog is a huge copout and let-down, so I am going to try and do better.
And, regrettably, even with the redesign, I don’t think I have managed to get right that one thing that I have always wanted from this blog: for it to be a place where I can dump the fun and interesting things I find online, or to act as a place for a quick “brain-dump”. The blog just does not lend itself to quick snippets of thoughts (I think Tumblr was like that?). I have tried to mitigate the issue by creating some new categories for exactly this kind of stuff, and maybe the taxonomy will make it work a bit better. I’ll see.
xx,
Photo by William Iven on Unsplash
