Lately, I’ve found myself wanting to wend my way back into a regular blogging/writing practice. I’ve been at this off-and-on for 20 years come October; although, it’s been mostly off the past few years. A lot has changed too. Much of the interesting open web that existed when I started has largely disappeared behind walled gardens over which we have no control, and so many blogs I once followed are now AI-generated spam sites. I guess I gave up, and now I miss it. Nostalgia, sure, but also wanted to check back in with a part of myself that’s been on hiatus.
Last week, when I opened up WordPress to think about what to do with this site, I found that much has changed in the interface and honestly, I’m really not super excited to try to figure it out again. (And I apologize for anyone whose email got blown up with a bunch of seven year old poems when I was tinkering with something). Managing a self-hosted site was fun for a while, but now I just want to write. I also find myself not wanting to keep spending money for hosting fees, domain registration, security, back ups and all that. Not unless I’m using it.
I wondered if there was there a less expensive way that will let me maximize writing time and minimize having to be my own IT guy. I don’t want to lock myself into someone else’s walled garden though. I started looking around and found some interesting things going on over at Substack and Bluesky. Someday, I suspect they’ll enshitify like most everything else online seems to do, but in the meantime, I’m giving it a go, which is why this post appears at both Coyote Mercury and Substack.
This brings me back to the title of this post: Analysis Paralysis. Self-hosted blog or Substack? I’ll do both for the time being, especially since the blog is paid for through the summer, but then what? What makes more sense for readers and writers (or creators)? One, the other, or both? I’d love to hear what anyone reading this thinks about this question (and where you prefer to read, write, create, and engage online).
And on that note, if you are here and reading still, thank you. It means more than you probably know.