I’m in the process of rethinking my platform use, moving things around, and reconfiguring various projects and online presences.

This process is partly the consequence of a semi-regular desire to shuffle the components of my life and try out new arrangements, new approaches, new projects and options and tools.

But it’s also the consequence of forces beyond my control: a sort of economic and digital weather composed of recessionary animal spirits, political hubbub, inflationary concerns, and billionaires snapping-up and setting fire to well-established online infrastructure.

Thus, I’m recalibrating and relearning.

Among other transitions and reconsiderations, I’m moving a whole lot of work from one email service provider to another, because the former is reportedly being killed off by the end of the year, while the latter seems to have staying power and has introduced some interesting new features since the last time I used it in a serious way.

All of this is a pain in the neck and there are other things I’d much rather be doing.

That said, this is also serving as an excuse to trim and consolidate and pivot and augment.

Everything’s been knocked off all the shelves and the furniture has been overturned and dragged into other rooms, so what better time than now to pause and assess and make a few adjustments?

I generally embrace moments of minor (and even medium-sized) tumult because they incentivize this sort of thinking, and it’s ever-so-easy to fall into rigid routines and methods because, well, they’re already there.

The ruts in the road grow deeper and more defined not because they represent the best path to where we’re going, but because there were already ruts and it’s easier to just double-down on those existing (possibly non-ideal) grooves than to consider carving fresh ones.

There are always downsides to deviating from the well-tread path, though.

Lots to clean up in the aftermath, a fair bit of stress that the new path will also be imperfect (and it will inevitably be lacking in some way), and the anxiety associated with attempting to manage something in motion, rather than maintaining something that’s (seemingly, at least) in its proper place.

Right now I feel like I’ve got a few things where I want them, a bunch of stuff roughly where it needs to be, and a long list of more minute, fiddly adjustments to work through before my productive space feels like home, again.

I know from experience I’ll let out a grand sigh of relief and fulfillment when I eventually come out the other side of this, having sculpted a digital footprint that feels right—feels like me—rather than a presence that at times, from certain angles, captures a glimmer of the right shapes and colors and intentions but which is otherwise often muddled, convoluted, and confusing.

At the moment, though, I’m doing my best to find satisfaction in the minor labors, the tedious process, and the slow whittling of rough, unpolished e-materials into something a bit closer to its intended, next-step form.

If you found some value in this essay, consider buying me a coffee :)