buttondown-email-v1a73n.txt (12251B)
1 March 26, 2024, 2:27 a.m. 2 3 Own Your Web – Issue 12: Finding Your Rhythm 4 5 [1] [fcc8dc79-0] 6 7 Own Your Web 8 9 Hi All! 🤗 10 11 It is one of the most common reasons why we abandon our personal sites and 12 blogs: at some point, we stop publishing. 13 14 But why? Weren’t we so enthusiastic when we started (or restarted) our sites? 15 Didn’t we tell ourselves that this time, we would really post more regularly? 16 And didn’t it also work well for a few posts? But then, everyday life 17 interfered. Other things needed our attention. And before we knew it, two 18 months had passed since our last post. Then four, then eight… And, just like 19 with other habits, once you let the series break and more and more time has 20 passed since your last post, it is getting even harder to publish again. 21 22 You would be right in pointing out that that’s part of the beauty of having a 23 personal site. You are free to decide how regularly you post and there is no 24 obligation to post anything. You don’t owe the world or the people out there 25 any posts, after all. 26 27 But then again, what is the point of having a personal site if we don’t [2]put 28 stuff out there from time to time, if we don’t document and share random 29 thoughts, things we learned, and nuggets we found? And even though you 30 definitely don’t have to publish daily to enjoy having a blog, it is only when 31 you post more regularly that many of [3]the advantages of having a personal 32 site really start to emerge. 33 34 One key to posting regularly lies in finding your very own cadence of writing, 35 a habitual practice that works well for you personally and that fits your 36 lifestyle and comfort. For some of us, this means finding set hours for 37 writing. Maybe it becomes your morning ritual, a quiet moment to collect your 38 thoughts and transpose them before the day’s demands grab your attention. Or 39 perhaps you're more of a night writer, documenting your day’s thoughts and 40 ideas when the world around you has slowed down. Or maybe, you just need to 41 give yourself permission to jot down a quick first draft of a post whenever you 42 have an idea throughout the day, taking advantage of the momentum when it is 43 still fresh. Still others like to batch-write a few articles in advance in 44 longer, uninterrupted sessions on certain days of the week or when they are 45 traveling, for example. Whatever works for you, in the end it all comes down to 46 making writing or working on your site something that you do consistently and 47 repeatedly, maybe even daily. 48 49 If you establish this consistent rhythm, you will find that over time, it will 50 become much more frictionless to publish new posts and you’ll leave the 51 resistance behind. Now, the rhythm of your writing habit is the beat that 52 carries you. You’ll also have more ideas on what to write about, because your 53 brain is constantly watching for opportunities for future posts. And you’ll 54 learn to not wait for inspiration to strike but to sit down and get past the 55 inertia of those first few words, because you can trust in your ability to work 56 your way through even [4]the shittiest first drafts. 57 58 At the same time, it is equally important to not overthink the process of 59 writing and publishing in the first place. It is your site, so you are allowed 60 to post regardless of what others think of it or how polished it is. It is 61 still a blog, not an academic journal and nobody expects a blog post to have 62 Pulitzer-winning quality. Perfect is an illusion. So just put stuff out there 63 and experiment. And if it is only for yourself. 64 65 And then, there’s a third secret to publishing more regularly, and that’s 66 enjoying the process of creating something and making it really convenient and 67 frictionless to publish. Above all, working and posting on your website should 68 be fun. Your CMS, SSG, or other tools you are using are an import factor in how 69 enjoyable and easy it is to post new things. If every new post takes a huge 70 amount of work besides the pure writing, it adds unnecessary friction and makes 71 the whole process more cumbersome. If, on the other hand, drafting and 72 publishing a post is almost as smooth as writing a post on social media, there 73 is not much between your thoughts and the next published post. This will allow 74 you to enjoy the act of creating itself even more and you will much more likely 75 find that rhythm that works for you – and keep publishing on your site. 76 77 What writing habit or publishing cadence have you found to work best for you? 78 Or are you still struggling? Hit reply and let me know. 79 80 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 81 82 Links 83 84 Here’s another mixed bag of links. Please let me know how you like them! And if 85 you can think of someone who would enjoy reading this newsletter today, feel 86 free to forward along. 87 88 Shoptalk Show Episode 606: Web Sustainability with Michelle Barker 89 90 [5]Michelle Barker visited the ShopTalk Show and talked with Chris and Dave 91 about a topic that is, given the urgency of the climate emergency, easily one 92 of the most important challenges on the Web today: digital sustainability and 93 the environmental impact of our websites and digital life. 94 95 👉 [6]https://shoptalkshow.com/606/ 96 97 Kottke.org Redesigns With 2024 Vibes 98 99 I already shared another post about the recent redesign of kottke.org in the 100 last issue, but I didn’t want to withhold this interesting post by [7]Jason 101 himself, in which he explains a lot of the decisions that influenced the new 102 design with all it’s 2024 “social media energy”. 103 104 [8] 105 [kottke-202] 106 107 108 Kottke.org Redesigns With 2024 Vibes 109 110 Well. Finally. I’m unbelievably pleased, relieved, and exhausted to launch the 111 long-awaited (by me) redesign of kottke.org 112 113 CSS :has() Interactive Guide 114 115 The CSS :has selector is now supported [9]in all major browsers (yes, also in 116 Firefox) and [10]Ahmad took the opportunity to create another one of his 117 amazing interactive explainer posts. This time, he explains :has() and also 118 provides a ton of useful examples of how to use it in clever ways, not only as 119 a parent selector. 120 121 [11] 122 [twitter-ca] 123 124 125 CSS :has() Interactive Guide 126 127 Everything you need to know about CSS :has() selector. 128 129 Talker’s block 130 131 An all time classic by [12]Seth Godin about why no one ever gets talker’s block 132 and why precisely therein lies the cure for writer’s block: 133 134 “Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can 135 write better.” 136 137 [13] 138 [sethgodin_] 139 140 141 Talker’s block | Seth's Blog 142 143 No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he 144 has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, 145 until the moment is right, until all… 146 147 What the world needs 148 149 A beautiful piece by [14]Jeremy about writing, why sharing your experience is 150 always valuable, and the right response to the assertion that “the world 151 doesn’t need another opinion.” 152 153 [15] 154 [photo-300] 155 156 157 Adactio: Journal—What the world needs 158 159 Write for yourself. 160 161 🎧 Personal Site of the Week ⌨️ [16]Cassidy Williams == https://cassidoo.co 162 163 Cassidy Williams is a software engineer, CTO at Contenda, a startup advisor and 164 investor, and developer experience expert. She loves to make memes and dreams 165 and software. Her personal site not only changes colors from time to time, but 166 also includes a “blog AKA digital garden AKA mind dump land” where Cassidy 167 regularly shares all kinds of things she explores and learns, like her [17] 168 publishing workflow, [18]the productivity apps she uses, or, famously, that 169 [19]she misses human curation. Also, sign up for [20]Cassidy’s newsletter if 170 you like newsletters (you do, right?). 171 172 👉 [21]https://cassidoo.co/ 173 174 Cassidy's home page with a few social media profile links, links to her 175 newsletter and blog, and a bio. The home page in light mode The blog with each 176 post's heading underlined with a different color A blog post with the title "I 177 miss human curation" 178 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 179 180 And that’s it for today. How did you like this issue? Which one of the links 181 was your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Do you have any other 182 suggestions on how to improve this newsletter? Hit reply now and let me know. 183 184 Cheers! ☀️ 185 186 – Matthias 187 188 You just read issue #12 of Own Your Web. You can also browse the [22]full 189 archives of this newsletter. 190 191 [23][ ] Subscribe 192 [25] Share on Facebook [26] Share on Twitter [27] Share on LinkedIn [28] Share 193 on Hacker News [29] Share on Reddit [30] Share via email [31] Share via 194 Mastodon 195 Find Own Your Web elsewhere: 196 [32] [33]CodePen [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] 197 Brought to you by [39]Buttondown, the easiest way to start and grow your 198 newsletter. 199 200 References: 201 202 [1] https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb 203 [2] https://matthiasott.com/notes/just-put-stuff-out-there?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 204 [3] https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-03/ 205 [4] https://matthiasott.com/notes/ideas-on-writing-shitty-first-drafts?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 206 [5] https://michellebarker.co.uk/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 207 [6] https://shoptalkshow.com/606/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 208 [7] https://kottke.org/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 209 [8] https://kottke.org/24/03/kottkeorg-redesigns-with-2024-vibes?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 210 [9] https://caniuse.com/css-has?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 211 [10] https://ishadeed.com/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 212 [11] https://ishadeed.com/article/css-has-guide?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 213 [12] https://seths.blog/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 214 [13] https://seths.blog/2011/09/talkers-block/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 215 [14] https://adactio.com/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 216 [15] https://adactio.com/journal/20996?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 217 [16] https://cassidoo.co/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 218 [17] https://blog.cassidoo.co/post/publishing-from-obsidian/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 219 [18] https://blog.cassidoo.co/post/producivity-apps-2023/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 220 [19] https://blog.cassidoo.co/post/human-curation/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 221 [20] https://cassidoo.co/newsletter/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 222 [21] https://cassidoo.co/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12 223 [22] https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/ 224 [25] https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-12/&title=Own%20Your%20Web%20%E2%80%93%20Issue%2012%3A%20Finding%20Your%20Rhythm 225 [26] https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Own%20Your%20Web%20%E2%80%93%20Issue%2012%3A%20Finding%20Your%20Rhythm&url=https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-12/ 226 [27] https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-12/ 227 [28] https://share.bingo/hn?url=https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-12/ 228 [29] https://share.bingo/reddit?url=https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-12/ 229 [30] mailto: 230 [31] https://toot.kytta.dev/?text=Own%20Your%20Web%20%E2%80%93%20Issue%2012%3A%20Finding%20Your%20Rhythm%0A%0Ahttps://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-12/ 231 [32] https://github.com/matthiasott 232 [33] https://www.codepen.io/matthiasott 233 [34] https://bsky.app/profile/matthiasott 234 [35] https://mastodon.social/@matthiasott 235 [36] https://linkedin.com/in/matthiasott 236 [37] https://instagram.com/matthiasott 237 [38] https://pinterest.com/matthiasott 238 [39] https://buttondown.email/