A Fresh Beginning

I’ve hosted my own WordPress site for the better part of ten years. During that time, I used at least 20 different theme templates. Some of them purchased, others developed from scratch.

Running my own site was enjoyable, but I spent far more time editing CSS than I ever did writing posts. In the end, my site was more for my own enjoyment than it was for sharing content. I realize now how stifling this was for me creatively.

With my hosting coming up for renewal in a couple of weeks, I decided it was time to move to a publishing service where I wouldn’t be able to obsessively tweak the back-end. I needed something that allowed me to simply write, and nothing else.

I gave WordPress.com a shot. It took away the ability to continually edit the look and feel, but I never was able to settle on a theme that was simple enough for my taste. The publishing interface was substantially different than what I was used to from hosting my own site too. Unfortunately, I never really became enthralled with the service. I love WordPress and everything Automattic stands for, but as a publishing platform, it didn’t suit my needs anymore. So I left.

This brought me to Medium. Every publication has the same template, with the ability to customize small things. The overall design is clean, leaving content easy to read. Writing is incredibly simple too. Start a new post, write content, add an image or two if you want and then publish. If you need to do basic formatting, it’s there for you. This is exactly what I wanted from a publishing platform. I was pleased enough that I decided to map my domain to a Medium publication.

Along with this change comes an even bigger one. After 30 years, I’ve decided it’s time to go back to school to earn a BS in Information Technology. I’ve been in IT for the better part of 20 years, so it seemed right to formalize my education, especially since my employer has offered to subsidize a large part of it.

Written Communication is my first course. I’ve already had to write more for this class than I’ve posted on my blog in 5 years. It reminded me how much I enjoy writing. I have no more excuses now that I have a tool which allows me to publish easily.

Expect to see more posts in the near future. Naturally, this is my personal site, so it will reflect things important in my personal life. I try to keep work and personal separate now, so you probably won’t see much about Salesforce anymore.

But that’s okay. One’s work does not define who one is.