This was a busy blogging year for me, no doubt! I blogged across four platforms and may have finally settled on "The One." Time will tell of course. Part of the busyness was directly related to the upheaval of Social Media as we knew it, with Twitter officially imploding into X. Also, for the first time ever, I blogged long-posts every single day for an entire calendar month; I'll probably never do that again.

My blog platform timeline this year:

• JAN-FEB: Blogger
• FEB-MAY: Micro.blog
• MAY-NOW: WordPress
• AUG-NOW: Neocities

I started this year on ye ol' Blogger (blogspot) because of nostalgia and the fact it's so simple compared to WordPress. Also, it was WP that pushed me away in 2022 in the first place.

Then with a Twitter exodus to Mastodon, I ended up re-discovering Micro.blog, which is a cross between a social media site and a blog host. I enjoyed it for almost four months. But for various reasons, I returned to WordPress.com.

In August, I started experimenting with Neocities, an old-school style blog host. The draw there is simplicity and autonomy. I have direct and complete control over my blog, hand-coding a static HTML+CSS site. It's been a fun challenge to learn and apply such coding. W3 Schools is in my Favorites bar.

August was also busy because I participated in Blaugust 2023, publishing daily for 31 consecutive posts. It was too hot in Texas to do anything outside, so I stayed online that month, blogging away. I literally took it one day at a time, pantsing my way through. Somehow I pulled it off. I can say I did it, but I won't say I'll do it again.

Lessons

What have I learned from blogging this year? I learned to rely less on Social Media for reach and rely less on WordPress because it continues to devolve from simple blog host to website builder. I get that it's a business, but I dislike it leaning into commercial interests. That said, I realize the commercial web will likely never disappear.

Yet on the flip side, the open/indie web never died; this year it saw a resurgence. The current state of blogging and social media shows that it's vibrant and welcoming. I also learned that stats don't matter much to me. A handful of quality people to talk with is worth far more. The Fediverse, like old-school web networking, has promise.

Summary

It's been a busy and interesting blogging year. I’ve been leaning toward migrating my WordPress blog to my Neocities site. It would be much work to ensure all old links don't break. But I've invested enough HTML learning over the past few months to think I'm about ready to start the process. If that doesn't work out, I'll either stay on WP, try Blot, return to Micro.blog, or re-survey all the options (Ghost?) on the table.

One crazy yet not so crazy option is to quit blogging altogether or, at least, drastically scale back to about one post per month. At the same time, I'm not sure I'm willing to actually pull the plug, assuming I'm able. Sometimes I feel like my life would be simpler or maybe better off without blogging. It takes time and effort; is it really worth it? That's worth considering. What would I do if I didn't blog? I have other hobbies, interests, and life responsibilities that I could pursue more. Trade-offs. Something to think about.