Thoughts on Blogging

I tend to get hung up on creating the perfect blogging experience. Like "oh, a CMS is designed for that, so I should set one up." But that's a lot of work. More work than I ultimately care to take on.

I can continue on with my current workflow of using markdown, but sometimes I do need HTML that isn't covered by the spec. Luckily, markdown accepts HTML! But then it's no longer in the perfect, human-readable text file format.

A CMS doesn't solve that problem though. A WordPress post is compromised of blocks and you can see visually how those blocks will render; It's all still HTML in the end. I can install markdown plugins in there, but it's all still WordPress blocks which are still HTML. Even then, it's all WP-specific. I can't open up Notepad and write WP blocks. At least, not at all efficiently.

At this point I'm wondering if what I'm chasing doesn't exist? The intended target of the raw post isn't a human - it's a web browser. The human is meant to read the final product on the website. As such, it shouldn't matter if I write a blog post that looks like a mashup of plain text, formatted text, and HTML... Right?

Letting go of the idea that my post needs to be the most efficient and readable thing is hard, but I am realizing it's fine if I don't have a CMS with all the fancy features, or if my markdown has code in it. What matters is I use the tools at my disposal to craft a piece of work I'm proud of.