In 2026 I want to write more.
Recreational blogging is a common New Years goal. And I’d like to join the cacophony of voices shouting into that void.
My hope for cruciferousgreens.com, the newest casualty of my domain-acquisition habit, is to finally have a little low-stakes place for my thoughts and ramblings. I've started lots of blogs in the past, but they've always had goals of traffic or visibility. This time there is no goal. Only write.[1]
On editing
People talk a lot about the flow state of writing. You sit down and the words just magically get onto the page. No one knows how it works[2]. But it does work.
Writing is a fulfilling process for a bunch of reasons, and the flow state is one of them.[3]
But I think there’s an even more fulfilling hidden gem in the writing process: editing.
It’s one thing to get thoughts to page. It’s another to make them clear to the reader.
There’s something magical about going through a doc and striking through extraneous thoughts. Illuminating clear points. Moving around stuff. Making sure things make sense.[4]
I’ve always liked that process. So maybe that’s another thing in 2026: I want to edit more.
On publishing and tech-y stuff
This is where I always get bogged down. I love tinkering with a site. I actually think that's one of the most fun parts of the web (henry from online talks about this and lots of other stuff in his really great recent piece A website to destroy all websites).
I've dabbled in web design all my life and have created some nifty things. Most recently I tried out Carrd.co, which I also still recommend. But ultimately I think if I am going to blog regularly I just needed to pick something. I picked Ghost.
There are a lot of great blogging services out there. I decided to go with Ghost and Magicpages because I like what Ghost is doing (and I love seeing new indie publications like 404media and Hearing Things popup from the exoduses of media consolidations).[5]
I bought an annual pro plan so that that decision has been made and I won't need to revisit it. This is the site and this is the hosting I'm going to use, and now I can just write.
I find that Ghost is typically pretty great but there are some weird lacking things too (footnotes come to mind).[6] I might do some articles here or there on making Ghost work better, geared to a semi-technical audience like myself.
Except... uh oh.. Now I have to actually write some stuff
So anyway, what is this blog?
I think all of this is a long way of saying I don't really know yet. I guess it's about leafy vegetables.
And maybe edit ↩︎
Actually lots of people probably know how it works or have some theory. There's even a field of psychology around it. But that’s not the point. ↩︎
It’s also one big reason why gambling is so addictive. Except in addiction research they like to call it "The Zone." ↩︎
Side note: who knows if this makes sense! ↩︎
And also because I’m a poser and many of the great writers I admire like Ed Zitron and Molly White and David Sirota use Ghost… and woudn’t it be cool to be like them? ↩︎
Since I'm loyal to Chicago Style citations for life, this is pretty important to me. ↩︎