Hug the ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Bear
I have spent the last 24 hours carrying out .codes domain searches. It seems bearblog.dev has rekindled my love of web building. Ultimately I didn't get one because, although I love the idea of comments and personalised email addresses, ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Bear feels like enough.
It feels nice to have my name in the URL bar, it feels nice to be part of a tiny community without any pressure to have the 'prettiest' website or the 'most professional' photographs (although I do think siobhan.bearblog.dev is exceptionally pretty). I moved away from most social media sites a while ago, I don't miss Instagram in the slightest, although I do occasionally miss sharing photographs. Perhaps I'll subscribe to ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ Bear's paid plan in the future, if this place sticks... I'd like to use the additional features but right now I cannot justify a long term payment commitment.
Something about being here makes me feel passionate about web-geeking again though. I realise how much I've missed in my time away from the keyboard. I used to create websites in Notepad back in the day, and then migrated to Wordpress when it became popular. But then everything became accessible and coding became something to avoid, replaced by blocks and widgets and drags and drops. I lost interest. I stopped trying.
And now I'm back and the coding has moved on, but it brings me joy to know it still exists. I think that's why I was driven to look at a new domain, to give myself a base to relearn on. I don't know if I ever will, I don't think I really fit within the community here without the coding knowledge to build wonderful things. I hope I am wrong.