On July 29th of last year (2019), I proudly proclaimed that this site, Folded Space, would soon return, rising like a phoenix from the flames.

Ha ha ha ha.

I was wrong, obviously. Although I was well-intentioned, life got in the way. Soon after I made that announcement, Kim and I took a long vacation in Europe. Then we spent a week in Washington, D.C. for the annual financial blogging conference. Then I returned to Europe to present at the annual F.I. chautauqua. Then I flew to Joshua Tree to present at Camp FI. Then I returned home, where I sunk into a pit of despair. (My depression really sucked last year.)

This year, things were more or less the same.

From January through May, I was hard at work writing and recording an audio course on financial independence and early retirement. That project, a joint venture between Audible and The Great Courses, hasn’t been published yet (tentative release date is February). When that work was done, I turned my attention to Get Rich Slowly.

Get Rich Slowly, you see, is a mess. When I re-purchased it in 2017, there were over 5000 articles at the site. Everything was in disarray. I spent three years floundering, trying to figure out what to fix first. It was all so overwhelming! But at long last, Tom and I began to tackle things during the second half of 2020. We’ve made good progress and have a plan for how to implement things in the years to come.

And one thing we need to do in order to make things work at Get Rich Slowly? Well, we need Folded Space to be functional once more.

There are a lot of great stories at Get Rich Slowly that don’t belong at Get Rich Slowly. That’s a blog about personal finance. It oughtn’t be a place where I rant about, say, how much I hate to use the telephone. Folded Space, however, is a great place for rants like this.

Our recent content audit at GRS revealed approximately 150 articles (out of 2500) that ought to be moved over here. But in order to begin moving things, I had to do some work on Folded Space!

So, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past week.

  • I’ve moved from my outdated (and broken) layout to a modern (but simple) design.
  • I’ve updated some of the static admin pages.
  • I’ve activated a security certificate.
  • I’ve re-activated the mailing list and changed it to weekly (instead of “post by post”).
  • I’ve revamped the blogroll to include only other folks who are still writing personal blogs (if only irregularly) after all of these years.
  • I’ve incorporated links from my Pinboard feed. This is a popular feature at Get Rich Slowly, and I think it’s a fun thing to include here.

There’s still plenty to do, but as of this moment I feel like Folded Space is finally ready to actually rise from the ashes. I can resume posting regular updates on all things nerdy. The other maintenance tasks can be finished as time allows.

So, there you have it. Exactly 17 months after promising that I was going to start write here again, I’m really ready to start writing here again.

I realize that, for a little while at least, I’ll probably only be writing to myself. I’m fine with that. I’ve sorely missed having Folded Space as an outlet. I process my thoughts and feelings through writing, and I haven’t really been doing that while this site has been on hiatus.

Plus, I’m fed up with Facebook. Facebook (and other platforms) killed the personal blog. Most of the things that I used to write here, I’ve been writing at Facebook. But that simply feeds the Facebook empire. Fuck that. I don’t want my writing to support any empire (unless it’s my own).

Let’s do this thing!

5 Replies to “Let’s do this thing!”

  1. Alison says:

    Looking forward to more!

  2. JoDi says:

    Just received my first weekly digest, and I’m catching up on your writing. I hope ditching Facebook becomes a trend. Facebook killed a lot of other platforms along with the personal blog. I could rant about the evils of Facebook forever, but I’ll just say that, as a start, I hope the company gets broken up so the better platforms they’ve devoured can be improved and other alternative platforms can have a chance to come into being and flourish.

  3. Deirdre Geary-Cordova says:

    Looking forward to more!

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