While I wasn’t specifically tagged (I’m not that well known), I saw Matthew Haughey do this (via his Mastodon post), and figured I’d jump in. Nothing like a little narcissistic navel gazing to distract from <waves hands around expressively>, right?
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
Trick question (kind of, unplanned): I didn’t even know I was blogging in the first place, because the “blog”/”blogging” terms hadn’t been coined yet! I created my first personal site probably sometime in 1995 (that archive is from February of 1996), and that site had an “announcements” page that was essentially an early blog, with short little updates mostly detailing what changes I’d most recently made, but also with occasional bits about my life. All hand-coded, of course, as this was well before any sort of website builder apps existed, let alone CMS software. It wasn’t until February of 2001 when I discovered the words and realized that I was “blogging”.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
I’m using WordPress (self hosted), and have been since November 16, 2006. At the time, I had been using Movable Type, which was the Big Thing for self-hosted blogging in the early 2000s. However, they’d been moving towards a more corporate model, and I figured I’d check out this new up-and-comer. Almost 20 years later, I guess it worked out.
Have you blogged on other platforms before?
Yup! Between WordPress and the previously mentioned Movable Type, I was also on TypePad (a hosted blogging platform originally by the Movable Type people, though I have no idea if there’s any relationship anymore); before Movable Type I used a system called NewsPro (which no longer has a web presence). I’ve also at times dabbled with Blogger, LiveJournal (no link because that account got purged), Tumblr, and others; I currently mirror this blog to a DreamWidth blog (like LiveJournal before the Russians bought it).
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, as long as I’m on my desktop or laptop, I use MarsEdit. If I’m mobile on my phone or iPad, I just use the WordPress web interface, because I haven’t found a good mobile app. (Yes, I know WordPress has an app; it just annoyed me when I tried to use it.)
Sometimes I’ll start writing elsewhere as I get thoughts together; if I do that, it’s likely to either be in Apple’s Notes app or BBEdit.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
When I’m really excited about something or really ticked off about something. Other than that, it’s kind of random. And it’s been more random than I like for a long time (honestly, and unfortunately, my blogging frequency has existed in somewhat inverse relation to the rise of Facebook/Twitter and other non-blog forms of social media), but I’m in the midst of (yet another) attempt at making a real push to blogging here more regularly instead of pushing it all to Facebook. Facebook and its associated Meta products becoming an ever more overt dumpster fire and prompting an exodus is certainly helping with that.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
Usually I write, publish, and go. If it’s something I’m really invested in (due to the aforementioned excitement or rage), then I might take a little more time to work and polish it before pushing it live. But my general approach is to just dump it out of my brain and onto the pixels.
What are you generally interested in writing about?
Whatever catches my interest. This is definitely not a single-topic blog; hence the “Eclecticism” name.
Who are you writing for?
My first audience is me — in large part, because I so rarely know if anyone else is reading (few people comment, and I long ago turned off any sort of site statistic tracking). My secondary audience is friends and family or anyone who might be interested enough in my ramblings to read regularly, whether by stopping by my site, following the links I put on social media, or who have me in their RSS feeds. The tertiary audience is whomever else happens to stumble by for whatever reason.
What’s your favorite post on your blog?
With 29 years of archives (34 if you include the earliest entries in my “beyond the blog” category that collects email list and usenet posts I made before I had my own website; the oldest one dates from October 17, 1991), that’s a difficult question to answer. However, I do keep a “Worth Reading” page that I’ll occasionally update with posts that I think are among the most…well, worth reading…and of those, I’d say my current favorite is the most recent addition: Change is good, where I advocate growth and learning and my own journey ever leftward, as occasionally evidenced by older posts here.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
Nothing solid. I do occasionally look at options for moving away from WordPress (most recently due to what I consider highly questionable choices by the primary face of WordPress), but so far, between having limited time and energy to devote to diving into my computer (my wife does appreciate actually interacting with me from time to time, after all) and not having found quite the right solution to move to, things are probably stable for the time being.
I do have a wishlist of what I’d like to have in a blogging tool (summarized as “early-2000s MovableType, only with some modern updates”) that, if I could find a solution that supported all of these, would get me off of WordPress in a heartbeat. But until someone builds my dream blogging tool, inertia is probably going to keep me with something that works, even if I’m not entirely happy with it.
Who else do you want to tag?
I haven’t got a clue! Especially since “tagging” as a way to notify someone is more difficult over multiple services. Of course, if anyone finds this and wants to jump in without being specifically tagged (like I did), feel free! Harken back to the pre-Facebook/Twitter days when blogs like this were how we kept up with each other and these were memes instead of silly text on an image!
