239 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
239 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
March 26, 2024, 2:27 a.m.
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Own Your Web – Issue 12: Finding Your Rhythm
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[1] [fcc8dc79-0]
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Own Your Web
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Hi All! 🤗
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It is one of the most common reasons why we abandon our personal sites and
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blogs: at some point, we stop publishing.
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But why? Weren’t we so enthusiastic when we started (or restarted) our sites?
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Didn’t we tell ourselves that this time, we would really post more regularly?
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And didn’t it also work well for a few posts? But then, everyday life
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interfered. Other things needed our attention. And before we knew it, two
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months had passed since our last post. Then four, then eight… And, just like
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with other habits, once you let the series break and more and more time has
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passed since your last post, it is getting even harder to publish again.
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You would be right in pointing out that that’s part of the beauty of having a
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personal site. You are free to decide how regularly you post and there is no
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obligation to post anything. You don’t owe the world or the people out there
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any posts, after all.
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But then again, what is the point of having a personal site if we don’t [2]put
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stuff out there from time to time, if we don’t document and share random
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thoughts, things we learned, and nuggets we found? And even though you
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definitely don’t have to publish daily to enjoy having a blog, it is only when
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you post more regularly that many of [3]the advantages of having a personal
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site really start to emerge.
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One key to posting regularly lies in finding your very own cadence of writing,
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a habitual practice that works well for you personally and that fits your
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lifestyle and comfort. For some of us, this means finding set hours for
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writing. Maybe it becomes your morning ritual, a quiet moment to collect your
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thoughts and transpose them before the day’s demands grab your attention. Or
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perhaps you're more of a night writer, documenting your day’s thoughts and
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ideas when the world around you has slowed down. Or maybe, you just need to
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give yourself permission to jot down a quick first draft of a post whenever you
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have an idea throughout the day, taking advantage of the momentum when it is
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still fresh. Still others like to batch-write a few articles in advance in
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longer, uninterrupted sessions on certain days of the week or when they are
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traveling, for example. Whatever works for you, in the end it all comes down to
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making writing or working on your site something that you do consistently and
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repeatedly, maybe even daily.
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If you establish this consistent rhythm, you will find that over time, it will
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become much more frictionless to publish new posts and you’ll leave the
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resistance behind. Now, the rhythm of your writing habit is the beat that
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carries you. You’ll also have more ideas on what to write about, because your
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brain is constantly watching for opportunities for future posts. And you’ll
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learn to not wait for inspiration to strike but to sit down and get past the
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inertia of those first few words, because you can trust in your ability to work
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your way through even [4]the shittiest first drafts.
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At the same time, it is equally important to not overthink the process of
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writing and publishing in the first place. It is your site, so you are allowed
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to post regardless of what others think of it or how polished it is. It is
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still a blog, not an academic journal and nobody expects a blog post to have
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Pulitzer-winning quality. Perfect is an illusion. So just put stuff out there
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and experiment. And if it is only for yourself.
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And then, there’s a third secret to publishing more regularly, and that’s
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enjoying the process of creating something and making it really convenient and
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frictionless to publish. Above all, working and posting on your website should
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be fun. Your CMS, SSG, or other tools you are using are an import factor in how
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enjoyable and easy it is to post new things. If every new post takes a huge
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amount of work besides the pure writing, it adds unnecessary friction and makes
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the whole process more cumbersome. If, on the other hand, drafting and
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publishing a post is almost as smooth as writing a post on social media, there
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is not much between your thoughts and the next published post. This will allow
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you to enjoy the act of creating itself even more and you will much more likely
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find that rhythm that works for you – and keep publishing on your site.
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What writing habit or publishing cadence have you found to work best for you?
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Or are you still struggling? Hit reply and let me know.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Links
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Here’s another mixed bag of links. Please let me know how you like them! And if
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you can think of someone who would enjoy reading this newsletter today, feel
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free to forward along.
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Shoptalk Show Episode 606: Web Sustainability with Michelle Barker
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[5]Michelle Barker visited the ShopTalk Show and talked with Chris and Dave
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about a topic that is, given the urgency of the climate emergency, easily one
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of the most important challenges on the Web today: digital sustainability and
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the environmental impact of our websites and digital life.
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👉 [6]https://shoptalkshow.com/606/
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Kottke.org Redesigns With 2024 Vibes
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I already shared another post about the recent redesign of kottke.org in the
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last issue, but I didn’t want to withhold this interesting post by [7]Jason
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himself, in which he explains a lot of the decisions that influenced the new
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design with all it’s 2024 “social media energy”.
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[8]
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[kottke-202]
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Kottke.org Redesigns With 2024 Vibes
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Well. Finally. I’m unbelievably pleased, relieved, and exhausted to launch the
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long-awaited (by me) redesign of kottke.org
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CSS :has() Interactive Guide
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The CSS :has selector is now supported [9]in all major browsers (yes, also in
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Firefox) and [10]Ahmad took the opportunity to create another one of his
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amazing interactive explainer posts. This time, he explains :has() and also
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provides a ton of useful examples of how to use it in clever ways, not only as
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a parent selector.
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[11]
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[twitter-ca]
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CSS :has() Interactive Guide
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Everything you need to know about CSS :has() selector.
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Talker’s block
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An all time classic by [12]Seth Godin about why no one ever gets talker’s block
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and why precisely therein lies the cure for writer’s block:
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“Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can
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write better.”
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[13]
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[sethgodin_]
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Talker’s block | Seth's Blog
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No one ever gets talker’s block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he
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has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits,
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until the moment is right, until all…
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What the world needs
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A beautiful piece by [14]Jeremy about writing, why sharing your experience is
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always valuable, and the right response to the assertion that “the world
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doesn’t need another opinion.”
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[15]
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[photo-300]
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Adactio: Journal—What the world needs
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Write for yourself.
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🎧 Personal Site of the Week ⌨️ [16]Cassidy Williams == https://cassidoo.co
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Cassidy Williams is a software engineer, CTO at Contenda, a startup advisor and
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investor, and developer experience expert. She loves to make memes and dreams
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and software. Her personal site not only changes colors from time to time, but
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also includes a “blog AKA digital garden AKA mind dump land” where Cassidy
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regularly shares all kinds of things she explores and learns, like her [17]
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publishing workflow, [18]the productivity apps she uses, or, famously, that
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[19]she misses human curation. Also, sign up for [20]Cassidy’s newsletter if
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you like newsletters (you do, right?).
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👉 [21]https://cassidoo.co/
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Cassidy's home page with a few social media profile links, links to her
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newsletter and blog, and a bio. The home page in light mode The blog with each
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post's heading underlined with a different color A blog post with the title "I
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miss human curation"
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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And that’s it for today. How did you like this issue? Which one of the links
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was your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Do you have any other
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suggestions on how to improve this newsletter? Hit reply now and let me know.
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Cheers! ☀️
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– Matthias
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You just read issue #12 of Own Your Web. You can also browse the [22]full
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archives of this newsletter.
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[23][ ] Subscribe
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[25] Share on Facebook [26] Share on Twitter [27] Share on LinkedIn [28] Share
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on Hacker News [29] Share on Reddit [30] Share via email [31] Share via
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Mastodon
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Find Own Your Web elsewhere:
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[32] [33]CodePen [34] [35] [36] [37] [38]
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Brought to you by [39]Buttondown, the easiest way to start and grow your
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newsletter.
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References:
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[1] https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb
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[2] https://matthiasott.com/notes/just-put-stuff-out-there?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[3] https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-03/
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[4] https://matthiasott.com/notes/ideas-on-writing-shitty-first-drafts?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[5] https://michellebarker.co.uk/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[6] https://shoptalkshow.com/606/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[7] https://kottke.org/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[8] https://kottke.org/24/03/kottkeorg-redesigns-with-2024-vibes?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[9] https://caniuse.com/css-has?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[10] https://ishadeed.com/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[11] https://ishadeed.com/article/css-has-guide?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[12] https://seths.blog/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[13] https://seths.blog/2011/09/talkers-block/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[14] https://adactio.com/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[15] https://adactio.com/journal/20996?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[16] https://cassidoo.co/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[17] https://blog.cassidoo.co/post/publishing-from-obsidian/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[18] https://blog.cassidoo.co/post/producivity-apps-2023/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[19] https://blog.cassidoo.co/post/human-curation/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[20] https://cassidoo.co/newsletter/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[21] https://cassidoo.co/?utm_source=ownyourweb&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=issue-12
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[22] https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/
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[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
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[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/
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[27] https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-12/
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[28] https://share.bingo/hn?url=https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-12/
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[29] https://share.bingo/reddit?url=https://buttondown.email/ownyourweb/archive/issue-12/
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[30] mailto:
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[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/
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[32] https://github.com/matthiasott
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[33] https://www.codepen.io/matthiasott
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[34] https://bsky.app/profile/matthiasott
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[35] https://mastodon.social/@matthiasott
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[36] https://linkedin.com/in/matthiasott
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[37] https://instagram.com/matthiasott
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[38] https://pinterest.com/matthiasott
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[39] https://buttondown.email/
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