How has technology changed your job?
I have always been a writer, but I didn’t really think of myself that way until after I learned to type. The way I learned to type was by imitation. I watched my friend Luke touch type for months, and being able to see how he did it long term just transferred. But it wouldn’t have happened so quickly without Internet Relay Chat. I wouldn’t have needed an impetus to learn how to type quickly and without errors if I wasn’t trying to keep up in a conversation. I learned to chat with people all over the world before I learned to write for them. I am sorry for all the broken hearts I left in (insert your country here).
My friend Luke was also the person who set up my first blog, on his server called “Darkstar.” The server ran WordPress, the very first version. Eventually, I moved from a local copy of WordPress on our server to WordPress.com, for which I just got an 18th anniversary notification. So, most of the changes that have come through my work on this blog have to do with the way the backend operates. I feel that the “new” block editor limits my creativity because I cannot use as much HTML as I know….. it will break the block system.
I try to keep technology out of it. If a picture is wonky, so what. If I had more control over the design, I’d take it. There are only so many things I can perfect, and the way Automattic writes its software is not on the list. I use the JetPack app because I don’t have to code anything. I sit here and type, then press one button. At no point am I trying to make sure things line up. Remember CSS positioning? Good times. (Narrator: they were not, in fact, good times.) I can’t be on both sides of the fence in terms of talent. Do I want my creativity to go into the design or into the writing? What do I have more passion for?
I chose the writing part, because I’m an okay web developer, not a great one. I enjoy studying design, but I’m better at talking about others’ work. WordPress is actually a huge machine that allows me to do nothing but be creative, because before databases were a thing, I would have had to hand code every link to every entry. I know because I’ve done it. You get lazy and your index.html is eight months old and you don’t care.
There’s no way I want to go back to that level of detail. Technology works for me, not the other way around. I just prefer longer essays to sound bites when I’m reading other people, and thought, “I could do that.” Now, I’ve been doing it for 20 years. Unfortunately, only the last 10 are on this domain, but I’ve searched “The Wayback Machine” for the entries that meant the most to me on “Clever Title Goes Here” and imported them.
It wasn’t technology that tanked that blog. It was me. Being popular for my observations was not fun at home. I had a very thin skin, and didn’t think I deserved to take up space in the world. I stopped writing, and when I came back, the blogging landscape had changed around me. But I was also older, and a little more fierce. I began to realize I had something to say, and other people joined me.
The more I went through personally, the more I needed this space to process. As WordPress grew in whatever direction this is supposed to be, I ignored it. I use a plain text editor and copy it into the app. Everything you read here is supposed to dance in your head, with very, very few pictures to accompany the waltz.
I want it to be that way. I want for Bryn, Zac, Supergrover, The War Daniel, Cora, Lindsay, and me for us to look like whatever you think we do. I think it would be hilarious to hear people’s guesses.
Just don’t forget that both The War Daniel and Zac are in the Navy.
(All of the sudden I had this image of a little kid’s drawing of my family and I fell over with laughter.)
As Marshall McCluhan has said, “the medium is the message.” I have done nothing with technology beyond use it to transmit text. I hope it lifts you from your world into mine, and returns you mostly unscathed.
My big news of the day is that Magda and I got the house we wanted. No technology needed to imagine the crying and hugging. Such a relief.
Stories That Are All True 