I'm a 40 year old half Swede, half Brit living in Germany with my husband and two young children. I hold all three citizenships and am fully aware what a privileged position it is, especially since the mess that is Brexit.
(I wasn't personally affected because of my existing Swedish citizenship, but the whole thing left me livid. I remain especially angry on behalf of all the people too young to vote in 2016, who had the right to live, love and work anywhere in the EU ripped away from them.)
Being a creative and nerdy child that loved both art and physics, I went into engineering at university, despite not knowing which field I wanted to go into. I wanted to make stuff, and I wanted good job prospects. I chose to specialise in communications electronics presumably because I liked gadgets and the internet, but it was unfortunately not a great fit. I found it both difficult and boring - it was super difficult to work hard for something that wasn't interesting to me. I noped out once I'd made bachelor's level of the intended integrated masters course.
I duly went to work in comms electronics and later semiconductor testing before I left that industry. I hated being asked what I did for a living, because I wasn't happy. Next, I tried teaching physics to teenagers, and while that was never boring, it was instead incredibly stressful, so I left that too.
I then spent a decade in a cosy time-lapse niche, where the jobs ranged across everything from building hardware through PCB design to video editing, which was great. I worked for two different small companies that both specialised in long-term time-lapse films of construction projects.
My major hobby over a lot of this time has been swing dancing, and would still be if not for covid. Other hobbies have included crochet, tall ship sailing, cycling and photography. I really miss the dancing, but dislike the illness risk. I don't want to repeatedly bring covid home to the family (which I have already done twice, despite being very vaccinated and relatively careful).
After the career-hopping, I ended up with a poor self image - that I must be inherently lazy, or work-shy. Three-ish years ago, after two 1-year maternity leaves in fairly quick succession had left me feeling directionless, I decided to nope out pivot again, this time into web development. I'd loved tinkering with making websites as a teenager, and it turned out I still do!
I used my limited spare time to retrain, trying to catch up to modern web development* and attending therapy (having a new baby just as the covid lockdowns began was rough, fam). After lots of ignored applications and a few bombed interviews, I saw THE job I wanted. I threw everything I could at it, and got a friend to coach me before the interview.
She turned my self story of work shyness and noping-out into one of knowing myself, what engages me and what won't work for me, of having the courage to try or learn new things. I cried buckets. And I got the job.
I've been a front end web developer for coming up 18 months. I love it. I'm very into accessibility, because the web is for everyone.
* seriously, trying to catch up the last 10 years of change was and still is a wild ride!
As you can probably tell from the previous answer, I can just keep typing on about myself and my experiences, so I do. I have had several blogs in different places online for years - going back to 1999 when it was just a 'news' page on a hand coded website.
I did lock it all down and remove most searchable traces of myself when I went into teaching. I sort of regret that, but you really don't want the teenagers you teach finding out so much stuff about you!
For years, lots of my writing sank into long posts on Facebook. I have friends who still do that - I wonder if they should also try blogging. Many of my Facebook friends are so thoughtful, eloquent, and insightful, which makes me wonder how much interesting and profound thought is disappearing into these platforms.
My current blog sprang to life during my pivot to web development. I was building up a homepage and portfolio for my new career-to-be at the time, and naturally it needed a blog. I found a couple of ancient posts from old blogs and Facebook posts to seed it with, and I've been adding to it ever since.
It's a bit all over the place, to be honest. Sometimes a thought just hits me and the words keep coming, which definitely happens more with emotive content.
Other times it stutters - I started a long post about how my website's sliding tabs gimmick is made and never finished it, but I published it unfinished anyway. I figured there was nothing wrong with writing in public. If anyone takes an interest in it, I'll add more or maybe even complete it.
Since adopting both very short notes (I call them Short Thorts because I try a bit too hard to be original) and week notes (a.k.a. Weak Notes. Yeah..), the pressure to only write big, long, good blog posts has lifted a bit. Sometimes I just bash out one of those instead, when I want to output something brief that's not only posted to Mastodon.
So many times I've thought "ooh, I could blog about that," and then poof, it's gone. I should make a note of those ideas. Maybe even within their own blog post... hm.
I tend towards chatty verbosity so the drafts are often written big, and then chopped down. I've had to do that for these question responses too, not that you can tell!
I often start drafting blog posts on my phone, as I don't really want to be tethered to the laptop or desk. Sometimes the best stuff comes when I have a spare moment between other things.
I do really like my computer setup and the sunny attic room I use as a home office, but I already spend enough time in there while working the day job.
My domain is registered with PorkBun, and the website is hosted on Netlify. I have considered other hosts, but I'm using a fair few of Netlify's handy features, like deploying from GitHub, Forms (to take contact emails and handle the Guestbook posts), and rewrites.
I build the site with Astro, because it takes care of the blog's markdown files, and allows me to use vanilla HTML, CSS and JS to build a static site, while also being able to use layouts and components and JS variables in my markup.
I keep considering whether to build a CMS into it, but when I do a big post I draft it wherever (sometimes in a draft email to nobody) and like to finish it up in VS Code. For the short thorts I find prose.io to be really useful, which I mostly use via my phone.
Because this blog has been through a few iterations already, and was originally on a different domain - no, I don't think so. I take so much joy in building the site itself - the blogging is actually secondary to that.
If however I was only into the writing, I would definitely pick something simpler with a nice CMS that I could comfortably use on my phone.
The domain costs about ten dollars a year. Currently everything else is free - that might change if I change hosts - I don't mind paying a little for a good service. The site doesn't generate any revenue.
Indirectly I suppose it's a networking aid, and building your network can eventually bring more income, maybe?
As for people monetising, why not if you can earn a bit of cash? I'd prefer people managed to do that in non-invasive ways, i.e. without a paywall, obnoxious modals, or tracking - or at least let me opt out of the tracking.
The mommy bloggers of the 00's suffered such a big backlash after starting to monetise - I'd hope we're cooler with it now.
I have a brr, a Heydon and two Henries to recommend:
I don't know what brr's name is, probably because they chose not to share it. But brr.fyi is wonderful. It's recently fallen dormant, as they're no longer in Antarctica, but the blog remains extremely interesting.
Heydon Pickering writes and makes videos. His style is wry, pithy, and in the videos somewhat unhinged!
Henry Desroches has such style with his words and in his sites - here are three, all wonderful in different ways:
The second Henry is my husband. He's blogged on and off for years, the archive is now pretty impressive! I'm biased, of course. He thinks deeply about a lot of things, and sometimes shares those thoughts.
You interviewing any of those four would be very interesting for me!
For more recommendations of cool stuff, there's my blogroll:
I sometimes I find words worth sharing in the books I read to my children. I think this might have been from The Worrysaurus:
"If it's not a happy ending, then it hasn't ended yet."
From me: Don't be afraid to pivot. If you can afford it, plus the time and the effort, do it. Share your experiences, we're here to read about them and support you :)
Finally, and rather less suitable for children, I'd like to quote dasharez0ne:
JUST WALK OUT
you can leave!!!
IF IT SUCKS... HIT DA BRICKS!!
real winners quit
Oh and your readers should feel free to come find me on Mastodon: front-end.social/@sarajw :)
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