It was easy for me to depart Twitter. I liked having a place to share thoughts, I appreciated the visibility some of my ideas and efforts gained. But there was no way I was to create content for a platform owned by the new owner, who closed his purchase in October, 2022. I still wanted a place to online to think out loud, to see what others had to say, and to chat a bit. I joined Mastodon, which I’ve greatly enjoyed. But I don’t like posting threads on Mastodon. It feels intrusive. I decided I wanted to have a blog, where I could post longer entries. I can, and have, let people on Mastodon know when I’ve published a new blog post.
In getting comfortable on Mastodon, though, I had quickly learned about taking more control of my digital life. This is an ongoing enterprise but it immediately affected my views of where I felt comfortable having my blog. I wanted something open-source; I wanted some ease of use; I wanted to own my domain if I could do so affordably; I wanted more than a plain-vanilla look and feel. I started exploring and experimenting. I thought I had found a home for the blog on Ghost but found that if I wanted a theme I liked it was going to be ridiculously pricey.
At different points in this process, I appealed to other Mastodon users for help and advice. By the time I wrote that I had reached the point where I was hating all the blogging platforms, the situation seemed somewhat grim. I thought that Mastodon post by me was just an idle complaint; however, almost immediately, people started responding with constructive suggestions. While building my own static site via GitHub was ultimately a step too far, just by exploring the possibility I learned more about what I wanted from a platform.
Today, I registered my domain, identified a host for this blog, found a theme, and customized it a bit. I republished my introduction. And soon I will publish this entry.