Landing on Squarespace
Recent developments over the past year have led me to rethink my footprint on the internet. Meta's pervasive nature has caused me to withdraw from FaceBook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. Twitter's egomaniacal owner has made that cesspool of a platform all the more loathsome. Reddit's short-sighted vision reminds us that even though we build these communities, they are not our own. And Tumblr... I just don't get Tumblr. But it seems cool. Mastodon has the right idea, and I do enjoy what I use it for, but the hooks haven't set in yet.
I tire of bouncing from platform to platform, yet I do want a space to share thoughts and creations. Although, I'd like to move away from likes, hearts, and thumbs-ups, which have the kind of effect on my brain I'd rather not admit to. When I was younger, this was Blogspot. There was something rewarding about a well-kept collection of posts in your favorite color pallet. A new website seemed the answer, but where? Wix seems easy and attractive enough while offering a low cost of entry. But upon closer look, many critical features are locked out of the cheapest tier. I have to pay more to remove the 'Made on Wix' branding? Come on... Everyone will tell you WordPress is the way to go, but everyone isn't going to help you troubleshoot when some rogue plug-in breaks all your links. I want to enjoy blogging, not debugging.
I've always had a lot of luck with Squarespace when building my own sites or for others. I avoided it for this project simply because the cost of entry is higher than the others. I won't make money on this, so why should I pay for it, right? That's how I used to think until I recently heard something that forced me to reconsider cost and value. On the photography podcast, 'Matt Loves Cameras', the host often champions the process of producing a photo zine, a tangible collection of your work. He points out that this is not a way to make money (in fact, you'll likely be in the negative) but that you shouldn't see it in those terms. He says the zine is a goal that should have a cost for you, something you should budget for, as with film or a new lens. It's okay that this costs you money, because it's still worth doing.
That's how I'm thinking about this new blog. It's going to be a lot of photography, because that's my latest BOOM. It's going to be a lot of journaling of used gadgets I amass here in Japan. It's going to be a lot of me talking about why I'm suddenly buying CDs again. It's going to be a lot of how I want this part of the internet to be for me.