This site is a result of in-numerous attempts at pushing myself to own my blog, again.
My last attempt was significant for me because it allowed me to fully host and own a wordpress blog. It had a good run through my bachelor life, got neglected later and finally shuttered, post marriage. Posts still reside, though, at a wordpress.com blog, which, deep inside I knew, was nothing but a placeholder.
So my wait continued for the inspiration that would push me to create and own, again, a simpler place for my thoughts. And that inspiration came from Camel, the blogging engine from Casey Liss of atp fame.
The inspiration, though, was not because I liked Camel, which even now I haven't made my mind about. But it was because I wanted to have something as simple as what Casey had, and get that done in an equally simpler way. At the same time, I also wanted to learn and try something new.
I knew my requirements were not complex, neither did I expect my audience to be huge. So I needed something simpler than a full fledged, php-rich, wordpress blog hosted on a dedicated host, which I also realised is too costly for my needs. Enter Ghost!
New Beginning
So this is where my quest led me to, a simple Ghost based blog to jot my thoughts down. The reasons, I had my own.
Simple I had heard so much about Markdown before. I felt everybody, almost everyone who writes for himself, was using Markdown. And every one of them had all the nice things to say about it. Even I tried learning it numerous times. But, I realised now that it is only when you use it that you appreciate the simplicity of it. It really makes writing, just about writing. Something I really needed.
New I wanted to change everything, the way I write my posts, the way it looks, the way it works and the way I would host. I was bored of all that wordpress or even tumblr, something I played with for sometime, provided. It all felt the same. For some time, I even thought about just using Camel. But then I would have had to work even on the engine along with writing, which I didn't want to sign up for just yet.
Not costly For hosting, I wanted to meet the above 2 points first, at the same time consider the cost factor. A free option existed with Heroko as suggested by Casey and Greg Bergé. However, I either wanted to go all in, with hosting on VPS or just stick to the simplest option from the creators of Ghost. Anything I chose, would have turned out to be a lot cheaper than what I paid for hosting the unnecessarily complex wordpress blog.
What I, thus, have is a simple, minimalist place for me to just write. I own, again, a self-built, self-hosted blog. Here's to another start!
[Postscript] There would a temporary phase when I focus more on the place than on writing. However, I intend to cross that phase pretty soon. Whatever that results in, I feel, should, more or less, look pretty similar to this.
[Postscript 2] I have writen a followup post that explains the whys and how-tos of this complete process.