Redefining My Website and Whatever it is I Do
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#posts #bloggingAround July of this year, my site threw a strange error while deploying. Usually I would spend a while googling how to fix it so I carry on as I was. But I was growing dissatisfied with my static site generator Jekyll anyway, so I threw the whole site out and rebuilt it using a different program called Eleventy. It's still a work in progress but it does most of what I wanted it to do.
But what did I want it to do? I've had this website since 2016, first as a WordPress site, then Jekyll, now Eleventy. For most of that time it's been a sort of author showcase. Over the last few years I added a publication record and gigs I'd done, mostly because I'd seen other author sites do this. It was important to be taken seriously as a writer, or so I thought.
When I was rebuilding it, I realised I didn't really want it to be that any more. I'm not very interested in being taken seriously as a writer these days. I've also lost interest in the idea of submitting to magazines or having any sort of poetry career. I still want to make little books and zines (you can order Emergence now!) and have them read, but I'd rather just treat it like a hobby. Poetry is still a passion, but publishing to this website and Instagram works well for me.
So I still want to keep this site knocking around. I enjoy having a blog I can update when I want and a prescene that isn't tied to the whim of some manicical silicon valley executive. I just want to use it for more than poetry.
What that means is probably a few more blog posts like this one that are more reflective or are about other topics. I might experiment with css. Maybe even a zine or two. Whatever happens, I'm going to chuck it all on this site.
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