Questions about The Blog™
Thank you Ethan and Gosha for kindly tagging me in this! ^_^v
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
I’ve always been posting on the internet. I started this specific blog (“anhvn.com”) because I wanted to write stuff that would be tied to my online professional self, for the Rewards (affirmation from strangers, building an online presence, potential career benefits); before that I wrote on a different, now defunct, blog about meandering things, which wasn’t private but also wasn’t known by more than like three people; even before that I was pseudonymously Posting and Oversharing in different places, but not at all about professional work things.
Mostly, though, I decided with this website that I would no longer be posting passively into the abyss but I would invite people to read it, which was a scary thing to do after many years of said abyss but was ultimately a worthwhile and fulfilling choice.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it? Have you blogged on other platforms before?
My site is built with the static site generator Eleventy, which I’ve written about before. It’s very flexible, allows me to make all sorts of custom designs, and requires minimal upkeep.
My previous abyss blog was built with Jekyll (unwieldy, frightening); I’ve written diary entries in Blogger and LiveJournal; I continue to use Tumblr, which somehow remains the platonic ideal of a blogging platform, social network, and archive.
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
Most of the time, I write in VS Code in markdown, since all my blog posts are markdown files. This is somewhat gruesome, but it allows me to see how the post will look on my site as I work on it. The unsightly editor doesn’t really bother me anymore. I’ve been trying to draft notes in Obsidian lately—in fact, I am writing this very post draft in it right now—and if I’m on my phone and want to record a thought, I write it in the Notes app.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
There aren’t any special circumstances that make me feel inclined to write—if I have a blog post-worthy thought (wow!) I’ll try to write down a note somewhere, and those thoughts can come from any number of things. Maybe I’ll see something cool and it’ll trigger some thought and then I have to write it down.
Most of my posts, however, have been either 1) recaps, or 2) process writeups; they didn’t exactly come out of inspiration, though I may form more thoughts while writing them.
My ideal writing environment is at home, at my desk, alone. Any other setup is simply too unergonomic—writing on my laptop in a coffee shop is romantic in theory but full of far too much physical and mental discomfort to work in reality.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
I usually publish immediately, which I’m sure is evident—I don’t do much editing beyond cursory proofreading, to imperfect results. But I really should edit more.
What’s your favourite post on your blog?
My latest Media Recap 2024 was a lot of fun to write and illustrate! I also like Weeknotes 14, aka the weeknoter post.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
Haha, I always have future plans. I want to redesign my whole site this year, because it’s been more than a year with the current design and I’m craving a change, but of course that’s going to be a long and hard process because I have an impractical amount of website content. Eleventy serves me perfectly, so I have no need to migrate.
Some future things I would like to add are:
- ‘Related posts’ type thing
- Using blog tags so my posts aren’t a disorganized, unreadable mess. better metadata in general
- Sidenotes I don’t hate (help me, CSS anchor positioning, you’re my only hope…)
Who’s next?
I would love to read answers from: Sage, Erica, Veronique, and Jedda. (Only if you want to!!! No worries if not!!!)
Also if you just want to do this, then I tag you as well.