Redesign and Reboot
Posted by Benjamin J. Thompson | Filed under Thoughts
This blog has effectively been rebooted. Don’t worry, all the old content is backed up. I got tired of flipping back and forth so much between blog purposes, I decided to get more specific.
It may not have been evident from the sparseness of the content previously published on this blog, but theRabidQuill is an important website to me. It has been a key source of frustration that I had not been using it to its fullest potential.
Previously I had chiefly used this blog as a personal journal and rough-draft arena for articles. It will continue in that personal vein to a degree, but with my professional goals in mind. There are several of you out there, friends of mine, who will notice the change, but everyone else who is coming to this blog for the first time will be unaware of this website’s history which goes back as far as early 2005. The “redesign” is only a minor change. WordPress themes can switch with the flip of an electron. I have rebooted the content.
And that is just as well, since the content I produced here in past years is probably not all that interesting to you. As I introduce myself to the world as a freelancer in the fields of writing and editing in a variety of content areas, I believe it is important to make sure the best of the best is put forward first. Piece by piece, I will resurrect older posts (everything is archived), refining them into better articles, for the reading pleasure of newcomers and for publishers to utilize as free content.
Perhaps I just like the fresh new blog smell. Is it possible I like newness more than a heritage of good content? This blog has been around for two years or more, so I don’t think I have a habit of being a capricious administrator or noncommittal.
The problem in the past has been my fear of putting all the parts of my mind up for everyone to see in the same blog. Should I make my blog about my love of science fiction and other literary forms? Should I focus on more tech-related experiences and thoughts? At what point is it appropriate to unbutton the trench coat and flash the world with my unashamed anarcho-capitalist political ideals?
Good blogs are specialized blogs. I’ve found a better forum for my political ravings, and I’m developing one or two minor sites on Blogger to flex different rhetorical muscles. At last I have come to rest on a specialization for this blog. Like the hypothetical explorer in G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy, I have sailed a complete circle and discovered the very port that I left, as though it were new territory. The specialization of this blog will be the crowded room that is my own mind and writing endeavors.
This blog will be a resume, a portfolio, a hub. It will be many things, and that is why it has always been called “the rabid quill.”