Tinkering with websites is my vice

I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't use some simple blogging platform that doesn't let me mess with the design too much. I claim to want to just write. But my actions speak otherwise. My actions reveal that what I might really want to do is fiddle with CSS and build my own custom CMS, thus massively overcomplicating the process of running a personal blog.

I guess I ought to exit the denial stage. I'm a tinkering addict. I'll never stop trying to get the menu on my site to look the way I want in mobile, even though I'm really bad at responsive menu design.

With that confession out of the way, a quick update:

One of the things I'm looking forward to is responding to other bloggers and linking back to their sites. I debated long and hard about whether to do that as part of the regular blog feed or split it off into a separate collection. Finally, I decided to split it off. Of course, I'll still link to places in regular blog posts if they are relevant to the topic at hand. My responses feed is more for the situation when I'm enjoying someone else's blog, video, or news article, and I want to write a quick response and give them a link. I am thinking of it as a place to store interesting things that sparked a thought for me, but that didn't rise to the level of a dedicated blog post.

I'm already over complicating it. The blog feed is for my own writing; the responses feed is for my relatively quick or short respones to the work of others.

So, here's a quick summary of what I've accomplished since I ressurected my personal blog.

• Selected Webflow as my platform of choice for this round, owing to its incredible design flexibility (and accepting the tradeoff that the writing experience isn't the sexiest available and doesn't have a mobile option)
• Migrated old posts from Blogger, Pika, Wordpress, Ghost, and anywhere else I could find them to a my new Webflow site. At last...everything is in one place
• Designed my new Webflow site. And by designed, I mean copied the design of Manu's site, which I fell desperately in love with. If he ever sees this, I hope he takes it as flattery...
• Created a separate feed for blog posts and responses
• Got the menu to be mobile responsive (there are still a few things I cannot get how I want them on mobile for the life of me...but it's functioning, at least)

I think I'm basically at the point where the site is live, configured, designed, and ready for me to quit tinkering (I'm trying to make myself not a liar when I say that) and getting to the part where I can just write.

I am writing this post directly in Webflow's CMS editor, which strikes me as very risky. I should probably write it in an app I trust or in a local text file first. But I'm trying it out. It's....fine.

Long term, I have ambitions to learn to use n8n to create automations. Low-hanging fruit would be automating a bunch of my activities into my DayOne journal (because why use IFTTT when you could build something new and exciting on a platform you've never used before), but I'm also very interested in setting something up where I can blog in Notion or some other app with a better writing environment and send it to Webflow CMS via its API.

One thing is for sure. I'll never get bored with all this stuff. So much to learn and explore.