A Blogger's Beginnings

tags: meta

@TheEvilShadoo 2025-04-24

Teaching a new blog old tricks

Hey, I’m a blogger now. This is gonna take some getting used to, but I think I can get the hang of this soon enough. I’m hoping this can ultimately help me become a more creative person.

Why start a blog in 2025?

That’s quite the question, and it’s stumped me until now. Why do I need a blog in the first place? I’m not a professional photographer, world-class chef, revolutionary programming prodigy, or someone who can afford to travel to a different country each week. Blogging used to seem too self-centered and unnecessary to me, but I don’t feel that way anymore about blogs. I realize now that it’s just how I feel about modern social media. I’m not beaming my musings into the middle of a mishmash of followers’ feeds on here (save for RSS, but that’s different, OK?). The point is, I’d like this to be almost as much of a journal for me as it is some rambly tabloid for you. Life isn’t always about what you have going for you now. It’s also about what you can make happen for yourself and others going forward, and that’s really why I started this blog. I’m not here just to show off my belongings or experiences; I want to share the enjoyment I get from them with the world.

How I did it

I learned and threw this together with hugo in about six hours. I kind of enjoyed the whole process of creating a custom theme to match my home page for everything, and I’m pretty happy with the end result. RSS feed and comment section support should be on the way in the near future.

What’s the plan?

I’m not going to force myself to post on a regular schedule, for now at least, but I kind of suspect I’ll fall into a habit of posting weekly for the most part. What might I post? Here are my ideas:

Skiing/Rowing/Hiking/Biking reports & pictures
Game/Movie/Book reviews (& complaints about the ones I’ve never played)
Song of the week
Tech problems & solutions
Opinions & philosophy
Whatever else of note comes my way Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy reading my blog.

_{P.S. Did you notice the new counter above my web button collection on my home page?
Rumor has it that you can incentivize me to make a new post by getting the count to hit some milestone values… 😉}