Some Updates

It's been about a month since my last blog post. Thought I should pop in real quick and give a few updates.

Personal Stuff

I'm not gonna lie, the past couple months have been an absolute roller coaster for me. I've experienced some of my biggest highs and lows in recent memory. I'm going through at least two major life changes right now and there's possibly more on the way. Not all of the changes are bad, but it's all still a lot to adjust to.

I'm anticipating a very busy September, so I probably won't be online as much. I'm already pretty slow when it comes to replying to messages, but now people should expect me to be even slower.

Plans for the Site (But Mostly Just Philosophizing)

There's a lot of stuff I want to do for my website. I'm not sure if I'll actually be able to get to it any time soon. I guess the most substantial would be "rebranding" my site and making it more personal. I started this site and bought the domain at a very weird time in my life. I wasn't really thinking about longevity. There's kind of a story behind the "sainthood" URL, but honestly I don't have any strong attachment to the word or what it means. I'm not even Christian. I feel like I should change my domain to something that actually reflects me and what I post here.

I honestly kind of hate the idea of branding, not just in a corporate way but in general. The idea that my site needs a signature color palette or a catchy name to be a "proper" site makes me very sad.

I think some people get very obsessive about their "personal brand". Not just online, but offline too. Everyone wants to have an easy descriptor for themselves, to be the "[insert thing here] friend". The artsy friend, the smart friend, the sporty friend, etc, etc. I sort of tried that when I was younger and I feel like over time it became less descriptive and more prescriptive. Am I "the x guy" because I do x, or do I do x because everyone around me has deemed me "the x guy"?

I think people are more complicated than that, we all contain multitudes. I worry about making certain things my "brand" because people change. What if the things I base my whole personality around today mean nothing to me tomorrow? Maintaining a personal website is hard. Not just because of the technical stuff, but because how do you neatly organize yourself into a website? How do you decide what and what not to share?

Somewhat related but I also feel like I haven't been using my "personal" website very personally. I think it's just a mixture of me being both a people pleaser and very paranoid. I'm always worried about people hating me, and also deeply concerned about the rise of surveillance culture, so I've grown to be pretty inhibited.

Okay, sorry for all the philosophizing, here's some actual stuff I have plans for.

I'm working on a new layout. I think I really overengineered the one I'm currently using, so this new one is hopefully going to be a lot simpler. Easier for me to customize, easier for you to read, and easier for your device to load!

I'm trying to figure out how to deploy my site so it's easier for me to update it. Right now I'm just dragging and dropping files into cPanel and it's really annoying. I'll probably be using Codeberg since I'm trying to avoid using GitHub/Microsoft products (I type, as I'm using Windows). I also plan on eventually moving my code projects to their own repositories on there, so people don't have to download them directly from my site anymore.

I really want to start using my blog as an actual blog. I want to get into the habit of actually putting things on my blog and having those things not be super long or formal. I kind of did this in July, but managing files was really annoying without deployment. I also maybe should look into using a CMS but I don't want to overcomplicate things too much.

I want to start linking to more small/personal sites and make it so that more people can link to me. The main reason I haven't joined any webrings or created a site button or anything like that yet is because I don't want people to link to sainthood.xyz when I know I want to change it anyway. I'm avoiding link rot by not linking in the first place. This kind of defeats the purpose of the internet, though. Hyperlinks are the foundation of the web. No one's going to find your site if there's no link to it. I hope to do all of that stuff once I get a new domain.

I have a few projects and actual content for the site that I'm working on but can't guarantee they'll ever see the light of day, so I won't get your hopes up. I really wanted to do some kind of Halloween project but since I'm going to be so busy in September I don't think I'll have time this year. Maybe next year though.