The State of Good Morning Magpie 2025
Good morning fellow subscribers and a happy New Years Eve. With 2024 closing and a brand new year upon us, I wanted to reflect on Good Morning Magpie over the past year, openly speculate where I might want to take this blog going into 2025, and provide an opportunity for y'all to engage with this blog's direction.
Without further ado, I created and maintain this blog on an open source blogging platform called Ghost for about $10 per month. I started trying to figure it out in late winter of 2024 before posting for the first time on February 25th. As far as themes go, I keep it fairly basic due to the fact that it saves money and I am cautious with major changes. Every once and awhile, I will piss around with the settings for the website, the colour scheme (which I have mostly kept as a sage green and an orchid purple with black text - visible on the website itself). I do have a few web pages created, but mostly it remains an about section and a reading list (moved all the books I've read since 2018 here from Goodreads - fuck Jeff Bezos). Putting the technicalities aside, let us move to the substance of Good Morning Magpie.
Since February 25th, I have been posting weekly updates every Sunday. In these weekly reports, I have tried to include the following: (1) a brief summary of personal updates from the past week (with brief views on current affairs sometimes), a compilations of interesting links (formerly referred to as recommendations), and a collections of photographs that I (or others) have taken to provide visual clarity to highlights of the week. The arrangements of these sections were altered back in late October and it has been mixed, but I am leaning towards supporting these changes. Starting on August 3rd, I started sharing brief nature journal entries regarding intentional visits into local parks within Calgary and the surrounding area. Within these posts, I wanted to focus on being attentive to nature itself by making observations, asking and attempting to answer questions, and document the feeling of the experience. The most sporadic and inconsistent substance behind this blog's content are the more unique posts. These are posts include a book review, two local issue opinion pieces, a photo essay, and the Chance's Choice Awards. My challenge in posting more unique content is my fickle and inattentive nature (ooops) with me constantly jumping from one topic of interest to another.
Going into 2025, I have the following goals in mind. Firstly, I want to continue posting my weekly update every Sunday night. As I go through the year, I may come to the point that I want to alter the structure of the posts again, but fundamentally, I like these weekly reports as they keep me reflecting on how I spent the prior week. In regards to further continuity, the nature journal entries will move forward as well, but with hopefully more regularly and attention to detail.
Secondly, I plan on focusing my energy into creating more unique posts. Given my inconsistency here, I am working on starting a schedule that will keep me committed to ideas throughout the research and writing process. As far as the topics are concerned, I do like to keep that loosely defined, as my interests are fairly varied, but I am wanting to write a love letter to DayZ, an essay on public memory of the the Italian front's White War, and how to make great espresso tonics. Those are a few topics, but like I said, they are varied. Mostly, I want my intention to create these blog posts to guide my reading, playing, listening, and watching.
Thirdly, I would like to create a blog roll. For those who do not know, the internet used to be less about search engine optimization and more about letting your own curiosity guide you through a network of links. A blog roll is part of that network and it acts like a portal system with a simple list of links to other blogs, newsletters, and publications. More about the idea can be found here. Since leaving Instagram and Reddit, I have been trying to keep my internet exploration within the indieweb spaces and my first goal in pursuing that is creating a blog roll (and cross-promote via others' blog rolls if I am lucky). Here's a blog roll at this link as an example. Here is another link as an example.
Ultimately, over this next year, I want to continue to build up this blog into my personal alternative to Silicon Valley's current array of data-scrapping enshittified social media conglomerates. Silicon Valley is relentless and they will continue to find novel ways to exploit the human spirit to make a quick profit. A better internet is possible. Further still, a better world is possible. And fuck Elon Musk.
If there is anything that you have suggestions on, whether on the substance of the blog or the technicalities to make it more user-friendly, let me know in the comments below or through private message. Additionally, if you are interested in starting your own blog - let me know that too! And folks, I want to say from the bottom of my heart, thanks for subscribing and here's to a (hopefully) wonderful year to come! Happy New Year!