Micro.blog is an unexpected, possibly excellent, solution.

First, the obvious: setting up a blog and a theme of choice is as easy as 1-2-3 (I installed Paper, the theme I couldn’t get to work in my Hugo blog).

Second, it’s about FOSS and even better, it’s Mastodon-focused. Same community of people. The general idea is in line with how I think: when you want to vent for a few lines, it’s a post on Mastodon; when it becomes too long (over 250 characters), it switches to a blog post automatically. Both show on your blog: the vents won’t have a title, just a date, while the posts will have a title. Easy as that.

Third, working with Emacs is a breeze. Write in org, convert to markdown, copy and paste. This works very well. When pasting, Grammarly’s extension highlights errors for me.

Forth, while it costs money to host a blog on Micro.blog, it’s nothing compared to WordPress, starting at $5. It’s a good service and a good community I don’t mind supporting with money.

So what’s not good?

First, I’m dependent on a service. It works from one central location. If they shut down or get bought tomorrow, no more blogging. I’m starting to make peace with the fact that this is the case for whatever social media/blog is out there because going public with something means using the “cool” thing, which will be replaced by the next cool thing the next day, but that’s the world we live in. At least I have all my content with me in my org files.

Second, it’s confusing. Yes, it’s kind of Mastodon, but I can’t use my existing Mastodon account. Micro.blog creates its own. I can cross-post, sure, but that’s too much. I don’t want every single conversation on Mastodon posted to the blog, that’s just messy, right? So there’s a bit of a workflow issue here. For now, I’m cross-posting with my feed account on Mastodon.

Third, which is more like 2.5, are a couple of technical issues I need to work out here as I go. Things like slightly adjusting the theme (I will not settle for an AM/PM clock!), figuring out how to deal with replies/comments, and how to interact with folks on Micro.blog.

For now, I’m enjoying the exploration.