๐ Not (Actually) my First Post
Last Updated: 3ย months, 3ย weeks ago
This is a post about finally getting my blog site up!
So, this is not my first written post... This is actually my eleventh. Iโve had writings accumulating since last week and have been desperately seeking somewhere to put them, so now itโs time for that final edit and upload (or start to upload) the actual content!
I was actually starting to get pretty stressed about getting a blog set up - figuring out Wix vs Wordpress and other such complications and even trying to understand things like managed hosting when my friend sent me a link to this simple site just to get my blog started.
Soโฆ turns out there are simple sites like Mataora blog and Bear Blog (the one this blog is on) which are actually pretty nifty free platforms if you just want to start writing immediately without distractions and without all the overhead of setting up a whole site or profile somewhere! Sweet, simple, and by design: no frills.
Not having "features" like social media (which Iโve basically sworn off) is a godsend for my ADHD, and yet I was actually surprised at how functional this minimalistic service is! I can even see analytics of blog hits and (on the paid version) article reads I get each day - which is useful for getting started, and on the paid version people can actually subscribe to my blog as a newsletter via email (which requires a bit of newsletter integration to enable as it's not natively supported at the time of this writing) or via RSS (which is permanently enabled).
Frankly, it just feels AMAZING to finally have a place where I can post my writings!
Which, though I have only started for real recently, have kind of been hammering at my soul trying to get out in some creative format, though it was hard to pinpoint that creative drive as the need to write, specifically. I kind of needed a push of encouragement there - more on that in my second post (which is coming out with this one and my REAL first written post).
But even with the medium of creativity not being obvious, writing has been a need of mine, something I had to express, though something I somehow paradoxically couldnโt bring myself to do - either the writing or the sharing publicly.
As you will see in the aforementioned first second post of mine though, I have now committed to writing every day. UPDATE (26 Feb 2024): For mental health reasons I had to take a hiatus from the blog for a while and upon coming back to remake it as something more professional-looking, I have since done away with my initial goal, which to me actually involved *posting every day. I'm still trying to write most days, though not publish every day - I've gotten to a point where I am now focusing on higher quality content (which means fewer posts) rather than my initial goal of simply pushing myself to publish as an exercise. This is also why I am re-editing and updating my old posts. *
The next ten sixteen posts or so (they've accumulated rapidly since I drafted this post) will actually come out a few days to a week-ish after they were originally written, due to this blog having not been set up yet and my having begun my writing before then.
In true nerd fashion I decided to draw an unnecessary schematic detailing this process.
I'm just gonna release this post as soon as possible before perfectionism delays me even further and attach any additional pictures as comments... if that's OKAY with you, perfectionistic and distractible brain! ๐ง +glares inside my skull fiercely+
Maybe the reason I want to add a cute schematic of the process of releasing backlogged blog posts (backblogs?) was just inspired by this video where someone helpfully drew the mapping for the song "I'm my own grandpa", (which very helpfully illuminates for my confused brain that, as their top comment points out, the song actually does not contain any incest or time-travel, the former of which my younger self assumed must've been the case when I first heard it. So, a big phew to that. ๐ Thank you, UsefulCharts for this video!)
Anyway, welcome to my budding blog, which, in the spirit of starting something new and gritting my teeth against the urge for perfectionism I will acknowledge is in fact NOT going to be the best work I have ever done, it is in fact, going to be terrible, awful, an entirely crappy piece of work, and therefore I can do it, no need to get paralysed by perfectionism! UPDATE: OK new plan is to find a balance, but yeah, perfectionism is still bad!
See my much foreshadowed ACTUAL first post for more details on that psychology from an actual psychiatrist, "Dr K", a.k.a @HealthyGamerGG, whose videos also enabled my commitment to blogging through the necessary cognitive shift.
And I have to thank my friend ๐ for (actually coincidentally) encouraging me with that same message on the same day I finally took that step to write my first post, as well as pushing me every step of the way in my mental struggle to get there and not letting me make shitty excuses for not making a blog!
Dear Sagan, don't we all need a friend like ๐, who sees potential in people who don't see it in themselves and suggests simpler solutions when your brain tries to trick you into giving up (again, see first second post)!
So seriously, thank you, ๐. You have done so much for me and so many people, you continue to do that, and I have a feeling you hear those words from people a lot, and yet still not as much as you deserve. ๐ซ๐
Back to the new blog, weirdly, funnily enough, I actually told some of my closest friends about it, which I didn't think I'd have the courage or desire to do, assuming it'd be easier to be a dark horse and write in shadows like some idiosyncratic movie character who becomes famous online but remains a vampiric mystery, emerging only at night time to buy snacks before returning to an archaic typewriter โฆ
Okay, my imagination is going rather wild, and yes, Iโm picturing Jughead Jones from Riverdale on his investigative writing bent, and whatever movie characters his character pays homage to (as Riverdale is all homage).
I guess I just feel surprisingly proud of myself for Doing A Thingโข๏ธ and Iโm still kind of riding high on that!
Also, yes, I know hashtags aren't that useful until I get a site that can handle hashtags - these are for the future! UPDATE (26 Feb 2024): Thank you Bear Blog for having a great tagging system so I could actually utilise tags as something more than SEO keywords!
For now, I just want to write.
Welcome to my shitty hopefully-now-improving blog!
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