I last wrote about the Magnitude of WordPress and said that the original version of the article was going to be much longer; however, the content was too scattered for me to try to bring it all together in a cohesive article.

So I’ve opted to separate them into at least a couple, if not three articles. If the last one was more outward focused on the status of WordPress and how we should think about as participants in its economy, this article is more inwardly focused on a few things about which I’ve been thinking.


The first thing I mentioned in the previous article that I didn’t cover was the following:

When I look back and see how much I used to write versus how much I’m publishing now (it’s been two months since my last post!), it’s weird.

But why “weird?”

At the time of this article, I’ve published 408 pages of content that dates back to October 3, 2010. For many, many years I wrote multiple times a week and for a long time I was writing almost daily specifically around various things regarding WordPress and software engineering within WordPress.

On WordPress, Writing Daily, and Deep Work

On one hand, I miss the frequency at which I was writing because I genuinely enjoy it and I think I’ve also lost some of proverbial muscle that comes with it (that is to say, I’m not as good as it as I once was – not to say I was necessarily good but I definitely do not feel as if I’m “in the habit” at the moment).

But a lot’s happened not to just to, y’know, the world over the last few years but also in my personal and and professional life.

🏠 First, Personal

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this or not or even if it’s of any consequence but in early 2020, my wife and I decided to move to a more rural area and build a home. Further, we had just welcomed our third daughter who was around six-months old at the time.

We’re closer to family, involved in the community, and all of the fun stuff.

Further, earlier this year I did a deep dive on reading a couple of books by Cal Newport, specifically I read Digital Minimalism and I read Deep Work both of which I highly recommend.

I talked a bit about each in the following posts:

  1. Introducing Digital Minimalism in 2022
  2. Digital Minimalism, Update 1: How’s It Going?
  3. Digital Minimalism, Update 2: How It’s Ending

Since then, I’ve also read A World Without Email and look forward to reading some of the other things in his back catalog. I also recommend his podcast for those of you who are also interested in this material.

During the time off of social media this summer, ruminating on the material I’ve read in those books, heard in his podcasts, and read or heard in tangentially related material, I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that the next phase of my life and/or my career will be focused less online.

That isn’t to say I won’t continue to work in software, technology, or WordPress. In fact, staying away from the things that tend to most distract me (maybe us?) will allow me to be better at all of the things I do both offline and online.

🏢 Second, Professional

For over a year now, I’ve been working as a senior software developer for Awesome Motive where our products help people “grow and compete with the big guys.”

Personally, I don’t work on any one project. Instead, I work on the Research and Development Team with a handful of other people all of whom I highly respect building systems and workflows that help streamline our internal tooling as well as helping to educate developers on some of this technology, as well.

I’ve also had the opportunity to contribute to a few of our properties in ways that not only have helped us launch new projects but improve the performance of some of the things we already have in place.

Because of my ability to spend my days focused on things of which I find the most value without being distracted too much from other things, I’d like to think I’m doing some of my best work and also growing in ways that I’m not sure I’d otherwise do.

And this is not just because of where I’m working, who I’m working with, or the tasks on which I’m focused, but also because we’ve moved to an area that’s helping us to continue to cultivate the life we want and focus on things that strongly align with our values.

So What’s Next?

When it comes to WordPress, writing daily, deep work, and the like there’s still a lot I want to do.

I’m planning to continue to do more of the same. Summer isn’t over yet but even when it is, I don’t know if I want to go back to how it was before.

I’m having too much fun focusing on more things with less distraction.

Maybe it sounds preachy, maybe not. If it does, I don’t mean it do be and if it doesn’t then I’m writing well enough; however, I still have the question as to what this means for this site. And though the answer isn’t necessarily as clear as I’d like, it’s better than that it was, say, four weeks ago.

I’ll cover that next.