I’m back after some travel for Thanksgiving, and now wrapping up many things for the year, personal and professional.
I was starting to feel overwhelmed lately, and as that usually does, it paralyzed me a bit. But I’m slowly getting through everything that has piled up over who-knows-how-long, and I’m feeling a little better about it.
On the Write.as front, we have a little early December sale on Write.as Pro and our WriteFreely iOS app that ends in a few hours (tonight at midnight, Eastern Time). There’s still time to grab that, if you want — see our Deals newsletter. Also, a few of us are still hanging out in the Remark.as Café lately. It’s been nice just chatting every once in a while over the course of the day.
Otherwise, I’m looking over all our costs for Write.as, because they’ve slowly grown without me keeping a close eye on it, and it’s getting less sustainable for me. Luckily, there are many places we can easily cut costs, like with old unused services we still host, and by switching to cheaper alternatives for others that have gotten out of hand.
As part of that, we’re going to start limiting the remote content we retain on our 8-year-old Mastodon instance, Writing Exchange, as those hosting costs have gone up about $50 every 2 or 3 months. With all of this work, we should be much leaner going into the new year.
#work
Thoughts? Discuss...
This is a busy week for me, as I try to wrap up a good amount of work before some travel for the holidays. I'll be very close to the computer throughout most of it, so you should see me more active online. As part of that, I'll be hanging out in the Remark.as Café all week long. If you're a Write.as Pro user, come stop by and say hello to everyone!
#work #RemarkAs
Thoughts? Discuss...
Sometimes life is a series of starts and stops; more meandering path than straight line; walking blindly through foggy woods instead of seeing the future clearly from a mountaintop. Lately I've felt like that, but I keep walking forward anyway, and I seem to be getting somewhere at least.
Last week, I put out a new version of WriteFreely (v0.16), our open source blogging platform. This was a huge update that was in the works for a long time. Lots of people seem to be excited about it and so far I haven't seen any huge bugs — which is great! This update had been hanging over my head, so it's great to have that out of the way and to move forward again.
Last month had a lot of ups and downs. But one positive was going to the HOPE conference out in Queens, and seeing some friends from the fediverse, meeting some new people, and learning a lot of new things that have stuck with me since. I also watched Mr. Robot all the way through — it's really such a good show.
This month, I'm putting my head down and focusing more. I'm trying to get into a routine and spend most of my day away from the internet until I absolutely need it (like to work). I'm turning off the news and scrolling less. These are so often my go-to activities when I'm bored, and I can feel my brain oozing out of my ears from it.
Reading physical books and writing in notebooks both help. I walk around the neighborhood. I sit in parks and at cafes, and watch all the life around me and see what thoughts come out. It's nice to sit with boredom again. It only lasts a second, and then I see so many more details around that I usually miss when my mind is a mess.
And the weather in New York has been beautiful — False Autumn, they call it. But it's got me looking forward to the coming cold, hunkering down for a while, and maybe soon emerging from the woods again.
Thoughts? Discuss...
Really productive day today. Biggest one was that I finally fixed some performance / availability issues that have been plaguing Write.as this week. This was huge, and of course will make me much less stressed, assuming it all holds up through our nightly traffic spikes. But I’ll be keeping an eye on it.
I made some changes to how our Articles go out to the fediverse, which I’ll announce tomorrow. This post is partly a little test to see how it looks! But should be an improvement, especially on Mastodon.
Finally, I started experimenting with something new around monetizing Write.as blogs. For now, it’s super duper secret. But it was really easy to integrate and looks pretty slick! So look forward to trying it out live on the site soon and seeing what else we can do with it.
#daily #updates #WriteAs #fediverse
Thoughts? Discuss...
Life has finally calmed down for me again, and I'm back to working on Write.as and WriteFreely.
I'm spending this week catching up on my backlog and getting organized for the months ahead. Over the last few months, I've resolved to fully focus on everything I've built with Musing Studio — similar to how I poured everything into this work back in 2019. It's an exciting but challenging time for the web, and I want to make sure we continue to evolve with it.
As I'm getting settled again, I'll also be hanging out in the Remark.as Cafe chat room all week, starting from at least noon, Eastern Time. Stop by and chat with me and others in the community, if you're around!
Otherwise, keep an eye out for more progress and updates here!
Thoughts? Discuss...
I’m at a big turning point right now with a life change that came unexpectedly in November, and threw me off all the momentum I had with Write.as / WriteFreely in the fall.
Doing my best to get through it, and I appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding in the meantime.
#life
Thoughts? Discuss...
It’s been a productive month! Released WriteFreely v0.15.1, our sub.club integration, and free Write.as accounts. Free accounts have been especially nice — over just a couple days, daily signups are 4 times higher than what they were before, and we’ve seen more upgrades too.
I’m working on WriteFreely v0.16 now, with a ton of new features that people should enjoy. I’m hoping to have that out by November 9 — six years after our very first release. I also have a ton of updates planned for November on Write.as that I can’t wait to share with everyone.
Besides that, I’ve been posting more on the fediverse, Threads, Bluesky, and even LinkedIn (😬) to get the word out more. We’ve had a long period of slow progress, and now I want to start ramping up again.
#WriteFreely #Writeas #business #updates #progress
Thoughts? Discuss...
A lot of dev planning today, thinking about the next two WriteFreely releases. As I mentioned on @dev@musing.studio, the goal is to basically bring WF into parity with Write.as, including support for photos, which is a long-request feature.
I’m excited for these next updates, as they’ll really move the product forward and give more people access to everything we’ve built here. You can see what’s next for WF (and beyond) on our project tracker.
#WriteFreely #WriteFreelyDev #dev
Thoughts? Discuss...
Just finished up a brand new integration with sub.club, and here it is in action! Paid subscribers can read on for more.
I’ve been much more organized and focused over the last several weeks. Trying to stay on top of emails and forum posts; got the latest WriteFreely release out this weekend; supported the launch of the Social Web Foundation; working on a new Write.as integration; and finishing up another Write.as change, also announcing this week.
It’s nice to feel on top of things again, and I’m excited for what’s coming down the line for the rest of the year. Maybe oddly, fall and winter feel like the best time to buckle down and work.
#WriteFreely #Writeas #life
Thoughts? Discuss...
