This week’s is the first in a while, so it will be wordy and juicy. Spending a couple hours each week on a weeknote isn’t the most sustainable thing for my brain, so I will pare these down a bit, but in a way that improves them hopefully.
What did I do this week
Clawing my way back into a regular writing practice this week after finally just launching my website at the start of the week. I’ve been in the design process for forever, but had really sat down to design it properly in Figma back in January of 2025 with the intention of launching it in the first quarter exactly the way I wanted it. Web development has changed a lot in the last 15 years and I have not kept up. In an attempt to avoid the perfectionism bug, I just pulled together the design in Elementor as fast as I could and launched the site in its basic format. It wasn’t as bad as it could have been and I’m a little surprised and quite happy with how it turned out. Shawn: 1 / the Haters that live in my head: 0.
IndieWeb
Like anything that grabs my attention, I’m not entirely sure why I got invested (again) in IndieWeb, but I did spend some time this week reading through the entirety of the site. I like the idea and I’m invested in testing out as much as I can with my site. I can’t say I understand how all of it works in detail, but I’ve grasped the basics and those got me onboard. If you aren’t aware of the project, I’d recommend checking them out. Link is further down this post.
What did I learn this week
I spent a lot of time digging into plugin installs, Elementor’s more specific customization options for my site, and embeds to get my content hosted elsewhere onto my site. Given all of my writing lives here and syndicates out, I do wonder how much that integration is going to actually get used long term, but maybe it will be useful for those who want to interact with it there vs. here on the site. Finally, I did install Autoblue,a plugin that didn’t really exist when I started trying to tie Bluesky and my site together in a way that enables commenting using a Bluesky profile. I’m hoping that opens some doors to designing a better experience that syncs across my site-first presence.
I’m also continuing my dive back into Lenormand cards. After years of Tarot and a passing interest in Lenormand, I have started to recognize where the different style actually comes into play in both personal and client readings. There’s a pretty pleasing directness to the system that I like. I think it’s easy to take it too literally at times, but finding that balance is key. I think it won some points this week when I was stuck on how to apply my theme card, the Fool, to a creative piece and got an immediate burst of inspiration from a 3-card pull.
What stumped me this week
Website backups should be an easy thing. Especially when backed up locally. And learning about memory limits in my server was helpful but got me nowhere. I changed nothing, to my knowledge, and yet haven’t been able to get my backup software to work the way it’s supposed to. I spent precious time this week troubleshooting it and learning almost nothing. Pet peeve. I’ve got a support ticket out to smarter people. I’ll just have to do it manually for now.
What did I listen to this week
Monday in the office wrapped up perfectly. I was almost skipping to the train station after I heard “Slow Song” by The Knocks feat. Dragonetteplaying on a local shop’s speakers and pulled it up from my library. The music video is one of my favorites.
I also spent a couple evenings really invested in IVE’s discography like I do on a pretty regular basis. Their emergence from IZ*ONE like a phoenix is something that brings me so much joy. I don’t spend as much time invested in female k-pop groups, but IVE is an exception.
What did I read this week
Of the 28 books I’m “currently reading” over on my Storygraph account, I managed to work through a few and added some new.
Over Sea, Under Stone by Susan Cooper– This is a reread for me, but it’s been long enough since I reread this the last time that I’d forgotten parts of it and it felt like reading it again. I also noticed a lot more detail I’ve missed for decades because I have a better familiarity with the Cornish area. I’ve also started the second book, The Dark is Rising, since I finished Over Sea in a matter of days.
The Evans Symposium by Arther Evans – This is a book (or a combo of two) that I picked up when reading The United Rite last year that covers several talks that Arthur Evans held in 1975 on the history of gay men in European cultures. Evans was involved in key events in the early days of the Radical Faeries and other queer pagan movements that have given us so much of the reclaimed and newly created queer traditional elements in witchcraft and the occult. It’s definitely got a heavy bias (he acknowledges this) and isn’t historically 100%, but that’s to be expected given what we knew about *guestures at everything* all of this.
What did I play this week
On top of a creative desert, I’ve also had a bit of a game drought going on for the last few months. I half-heartedly throw some time at Marvel Rivals still, even attempted a single game of League after not touching it for almost a year.
We did finally get a new content update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons and I’ve rediscovered the joy of a little bit of ACNH a day. The addition of a hotel, easier crafting, and a bunch of new items really helps. We’ll see if I survive the easter event.
Weekly link
https://indieweb.org– As mentioned earlier, this “people-focused” approach to the internet is very appealing. It follows a theme that I feel the public is getting more interested in over the last couple years where it’s more important than ever to reclaim our unique base divorced of social media companies as our first place before we push content out to those networks. As someone who’s lost design presentations and creative pieces to places like Instagram, I’m more aware of this now than I was before. This is not an easy reading link, but if you’re invested in website development and want to take it a step further, give this a read.
Join the conversation over on Bluesky!
Really curious if it getting skipped also breaks the comment fetching. Let’s find out…