When I was younger I used to write more on the open web. Mostly blogging with the occasional article once every blue moon. These days, however, it seems like I mostly tweet or or post photos to Instagram.

Somewhere along the line I started worrying about driving traffic to my website (without any real reason). The experts said that the way to build consistent traffic is to produce "evergreen" content, that is content that doesn't grow stale and is always valuable.

Listening to the experts I wanted to start only producing "evergreen" content. But it's not possible to just produce evergreen content. Evergreen content takes time and a tremendous amount of focus. Just like real ever green forests, they need the rest of the ecosystem around it to thrive.

I tried a few months ago to revive the my old habits by writing with a Jekyll based website, but the friction of creating new flat files with specific config headers and managing photos with a build system was enough friction to make it no fun and not stick.

When I used to write consistently on my own site in the past I used MarsEdit to post to a Wordpress blog. Managing a server and maintaining Wordpress feels like full-time job, so that’s out. But using native software and clients to write, that's still possible.

This is me dipping my toes back into the open web again. Who knows if it will stick, but it's a step towards a future want to exist. A future where I own the words I write.