One njms.ca under God
Published on 2024-04-06
I've done it. I've... basically walked back on everything I said two months ago:
Over the last two days I've hacked together an eldritch horror of Python scripts that compiled all my articles from both my website and my capsule into an SQLite database¹, and then I hacked together another eldritch horror of Python scripts to manage and render them into stuff my website and capsule can handle. So, now I have a home-grown meta-static site generator that I pray won't disintegrate under its own weight in a few weeks.
The result is that now all of my writing can be found on both my blog and gemlog
As I've talked about before, I came into gemspace wanting to make something that'd stand on its own. My original plan was for my website to house more well-developed pieces, whereas my gemlog would be for high-pace/low-effort writing. That turned out to not really be the case, and over time it became pretty clear that my gemlog was the home for all my writing, and that my website was being neglected. I like being on gemspace but considering how much time I've invested in my website over the years I didn't want it to get left in the dust. So, here we are.
I've at least alluded before to the fact that I'm trying out this whole emotional vulnerability thing, or this "not wearing twenty different masks to accommodate twenty different people's expectations" thing. I've embodied that pretty well in gemspace, I think; I've made some significant progress. While porting my articles to the New Structure, anxiety got the best of me, and I wanted to go through all of them just to make sure I haven't said anything my classmates or future employers will think is embarrassing. And I did; I went through all 101 of them. Crazy to think we're here. But I didn't really end up cutting anything out. The only article I dropped was one that was already on the web. What I've built here is turning into a pretty earnest expression of who I am or who I want to be, and there isn't really anything to be ashamed of in that.
Having a single, unified collection of articles serves this goal a lot better. It's scary, but good. I don't exactly hide the existence of njms.ca from the people in my life; I brandish it in whatever platform will allow me to include web links. The other week, someone I hadn't met before at my school emailed me in response to something I wrote on my website quite a long time ago². That was scary. Scary… but good.
Definitely getting the feeling I'll be much more engaged in gemspace for the foreseeable future, though. It's where all the cool people are.
In the spirit of updates, it's exam season. I probably shouldn't have spent the last two days writing Python scripts, but here we are. I suppose my streak of one article a day couldn't go on forever. Once I can get a handle on things again I do hope to get back in the groove of writing things regularly.
Footnotes
¹ SQLite my beloved
² If you're reading this, hi
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