I go backwards and forwards about what I want gr36.com to be. Over the years it has been a portfolio of sorts, an attempt at being a news website, a podcast host and lots of things in between. Nowadays it’s decidedly more amateur and more of an extension of myself that evolves over time depending on what I am up to and an extension of myself.

I don’t even have a ‘thing’ I want to write about. Most people seem to have an issue, or a cause, or even an interest they want to cover all the ins and outs of. I loosely revolve around technology but expand into all sorts of areas that I am interested in, but I guess thats the point a personal blog should be an extension of the person hitting the publish button.

Everything that my blog is I have learnt to do. I have studied zero computing skills officially, but my blog as taught me HTML and CSS skills along with some serve management things, SEO knowledge and a vast number of things — many of which I have already forgotten. The current WordPress is self-hosted, when it was micro.blog I had to learn all the Hugo things that made it tick. As such, in times of hardship when I wonder why bother I remember that my blog is more than words, it is a place I have grown.

But most importantly, I want to be able to be wrong. I want to change my mind! I want to evolve. . . .blogging feels to me like a world of endless drafting, endless revisioning. – Austin Kleon

I have written a great many words, most of them terrible, but most of which have taught me something about myself just through the act of typing them out. I have changed my mind, worked thing through and changed as a person because I have written them on the internet. I want to be held accountable for the words that come from me and a blog is the best place to do it. As Austin write about above, it’s more forgiving than putting all of your thoughts on social media. You are allowed to get things wrong. Be forgiven for the occasional (or more than occasional) spelling mistake or typo because a blog is you.

Much like the post on a blog, that you can edit, improve, and grow them they reflect the thoughts that spurred them in the first place. Austin Kleon also goes on to point out the importance of getting things wrong later in his post he says “Being wrong publicly is the easiest way to learn what you need to know.” This applies to a friend texting you to say that the MacBook Pro 13″ has two ports and not four, but also to opinions you have on anything. I can get things wrong in person, or on social media, but there is nothing quite like writing a post and growing because I wrote it.

The design is a bit weird; the words are hit and miss but it’s my blog, and it’s personal.

Edit: Not long after this I found a new home