As of 2026, my personal website, Trace Meek dot com, is 25 years old. (I registered the domain name on February 7th, 2001.) I’m celebrating this occasion by moving my blogging over to this new subdomain, blog.tracemeek.com, which you are now reading. I plan to leave the old blog in place for posterity. To let it retire, if you will. Why? I’ll spare you all the technical details, but essentially, the previous template — which I had designed during the Covid pandemic — required a lot of manual tinkering and code-wrangling (HTML and CSS) every time I wanted to post. It was fun for a while, and good for my web design chops, but the level of friction made it an unattractive platform for sharing quick one-off social media style posts, combining a featured image (or gallery) and a few words. So I tended to publish less to my website and more to social media sites like Instagram.
But as you may have noticed, these days Adstagram absolutely sucks. It used to be a fun place to keep up with one’s creative friends — and to share one’s own work. But the world has changed. In the course of a simple one-minute check-in, one can now expect to see a post from a friend or two, several disturbing re-posts about horrific state-sponsored violence, lots of pictures of screenshotted text, and several cheerful ads for clothes and/or gadgets, pretending that nothing is wrong. It’s not natural for the brain to ingest information in this disjointed way — it creates a sense of emotional whiplash.
There’s also the issue of who and what we are supporting, through our attention. And the fact that we have normalized the total invasion of privacy foisted upon us by the consumerist advertising machine.
And then there’s Meta’s awful design decisions. Stories disappear after a short period of time, leading to a false sense of urgency. “If I don’t look at this person’s story right now, I’ll miss out!” And on the flip side of that, many people use Stories to post their “throwaway” content that they don’t want clogging up their “grid.” (I’ve done that before, and I’m not proud of it.)
I still don’t understand “Reels,” and how they are any better than the older “video posts.”
And now there’s a new privacy-invading feature: “social liking” (or whatever they call it). Posts are littered with larger-sized avatars of your mutuals who have liked a particular post. Why?
Notes? I don’t get them.
Audio that blares, even when I have my phone set to “silent mode.” Disrespectful.
The whole app is now a junkyard of ill-considered design decisions. It used to be so simple and perfect. Just square photos, and later, videos, posted by your friends and people that you chose to follow, in chronological order. No ads. No AI BS. No “suggested” content or accounts. Instagram is a textbook case of enshittification.
It all feeds an addiction that I’m not comfortable with.
Before I post these days, I ask myself, “What am I amplifying?”
As an alternative to Instagram, I had thought that I might warm up to Bluesky. It is for sure a more ethical platform. I’m all for Public Benefit Corporations. But the platform feels a bit much like Twitter to me, in terms of its presentation and tools. Character limits? Threaded posts? Inconsistent typography? Why? Text is cheap. Just let people write. Also, it’s a relatively ad-free platform for now, but I imagine that will change soon enough. And I have had enough with ads.
Why not a Medium? Or a Substack? I’m not even sure I know what those are. Is it like a blog, but on a third-party’s server? Is it so that writers can charge for subscriptions, and thus “monetize” their writing? If so, that’s reasonable. What happens when the hosts behave unethically? Does one jump ship and find the next shiny new platform?
Which brings me to the good old-fashioned world of blogs. Long before there was ever a Facebook, there were blogs. Different bloggers had their own niches, their own unique site designs, and their own independent brands and voices. People could link to each other! Some blogs allowed people to comment, right there on the blog post. I’d love to see that model make a comeback.
I have been particularly inspired by Ellen Lupton’s essays. She hasn’t published on her site in a while, but it’s so refreshing to see the web used in this way. Writing for the sake of pleasure, and to share ideas.
The purpose of this blog is to allow myself to “be the change that I want to see in the world.” No ads. No hysteria. No character limits. Nothing to sell you. No gut-wrenching world news. Just a combination of words, photos (and photo galleries), art, music, and maybe an occasional video or two — using my new WordPress template that lowers the publishing friction level.
Am I under any illusion that I will post more frequently? No. 😊 But I hope that when I do have something to say, I’ll be more inclined to say it here in my little corner of the internet.
The Value of Compartmentalization
Have you ever had the experience where you meet someone, and in the course of getting to know each other, the question arises, “So, what do you do?” It’s shorthand for “what do you do for work” but it’s open-ended enough to allow for some improvisation in your mutual responses, depending on the context. Let’s say that you are a web designer by trade, and the new acquaintance is the founder of a fancy web design firm (true story). In this context, you’re likely to emphasize the technical / professional skill that you do to earn your living and advance your career.
But what if you have a rich creative life outside of your day job, and the new acquaintance is a fellow artist, photographer, writer, musician, or ice skater? In this context, you might talk more about your avocation (the work you do that inspires you and brings you joy) than your vocation (the thing you do for money).
My beloved previous website tended to be a disorganized sock drawer where I would post all of my varied interests, travels, and musings in one chronological timeline. For a long time that felt like the right way to be — one whole person containing multitudes of interests, abilities, and dreams. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and I still have a sentimental fondness for that holistic approach, but I suspect it was a bit scattershot to read and make sense of.
Multitasking can be exhausting. Sometimes it’s nicer to turn one’s attention to one thing, and do that thing well in that moment. Then move on to the next thing, then the next, and so on.
In this spirit, I’ve decided to fork my web presence into separate entities, based on my purpose and my interests at the moment. I’ve created a new website to present my photography portfolio, a separate website to showcase my art portfolio, and this general-purpose blog that you are currently reading. I am still the same whole person as always, but these new structures will allow me to compartmentalize somewhat — to maintain a bit of separation between the various creative and professional aspects of my life.