K.I.S.S.
When I started this blog I started doing all sorts of weird stuff to try and get a “fancy” blog platform deployed that used clever technology. I wanted to use tech that I was familiar with, but in the end it wound up being more complex and less useful. The whole point of the blog was to write down my thoughts and record them somewhere for other people to (maybe) read them. That’s it.
This is a microcosm for what my knee-jerk reaction usually is to solving problems. I’ll give you another example:
A couple years ago I decided I wanted to build an heirloom bookshelf for one of our girls. It was during covid, and I invested a lot of money in woodworking tools, and found some white oak being sold locally. I bought the rough-sawn lumber and took it from that to a completed bookshelf. I think the bookshelf turned out great, I also think it will last a very, very long time. It also cost me over $700 in materiaks, and hours of my time spread out over more than a year.
Contrast that with another bookshelf we have in our home, which we’ve had for nearly ten years. This bookshelf is from Ikea. It’s fine. it looks nice enough from a distance, but you can tell that it’s cheap flat-pack furniture if you look even marginally closely. However, it als only cost around $150, and took less than an hour to assemble.
The moral of the story is; sometimes you just need use the simpler/quicker tool to get the job done. If you want a bookshelf, buy a bookshelf. If you want to build a bookshelf, build a bookshelf. If you want to write a blog, then write a blog. If you want to build a blog, then… By all means, build a blog.
I wanted to write a blog, and luckily before I wasted too much time building a blog, I realized I just wanted to write one.