A journey in writing and editing

This particular journey started about 9 years ago, when I began using the internet for activism, and eventually got my first Netbook.

Thinking about it it’s possible that it began even earlier when I was in my teens, hanging out on IRC and eventually learning to write scripts for mIRC. I began programming.

That interest stayed with me, while the interest to write had already been with me since I started to learn how to write. I kept a diary when I was 8 years old, and eventually I began writing more and more in it, always caring a diary with me in later grades in school.

Different communities provided diary functions, what I didn’t realize at the time was that this was basically blogging, and I did it a lot. Even when I had a physical notebook to write in by hand, I would also keep a public, to friends or everyone on the platform, diaries.

The first one was plain text, which eventually got some formatting options, and if you understood how to use them you were some kind of wizard. But I wanted to learn, play around and find my own esthetic.

But, the journey I’m more interesting in is from html text editors and CLI, and shunning WYSIWYG, to be now actually preferring to work with editors which help me along the way.

Basically it’s a mental health thing, an allocation of resources. Finding that I’m now incapable of running Linux which tbh even the best of visuals still rely heavily on the command line, and opting for windows “because it just works”.

Yes, I’ve run my own wp server. I’ve had two Ubuntu servers to play around with. One for media and one for internet stuff (the WordPress, as well as irc related stuff). And yes I’ve run Ubuntu on my Netbook. I’ve fixed broken windows installs with help of Linux, and used to write really noob guides for Linux when I got started with it because there wasn’t any that were on a low enough level to teach me the lingo etc.

I used to prefer plain text, and just focus on writing first and formatting later. I’d be able to crank out an idea without looking at it until later, sometimes already formatting in code format because of the editor.

Today I have been trying out the new Gutenberg editor with WordPress, and I’m finding it very rewarding to use, for me in the place I’m at right now. What I mean is, because of various brain fog and other difficulties it helps me to be able to just view the visual and find the correct button.

So I went from this to only running Windows or Osx (because we have two MacBooks in the household), not launching my own servers or self hosting in other ways. And writing in editors which help me along.

My journey had taught me that wysiwyg editors etc. serve a purpose, and help those who need it. Currently for me, with CFS/me it’s just too much mental overhead to set up my own server, learn a new platform to work with, instead of just picking something I already know.

On that note though I’m currently trying to baby step when I want to try new things, and there’s progress being made, but we can talk about that another day. Being able to choose what I do where, gives me a lot more space to learn new things, and energy to write more blog posts. I feel like we’re on to something here.


This post had been updated from its first draft to add in a few more paragraphs.

If you enjoyed this little article of musings, and would like me to be able to write them more, feel free to head over my patreon and check out the tiers there!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.