Answer: maybe!
Hello everyone! Long time no speak.
I’m Holly and I use to run a little personal blog called Empfire. I stopped publishing posts on there around the start of the panny d because I felt like I had nothing to say anymore, and I was struggling with burnout as a result of running my web development business.
But do you know what? I really miss blogging. I miss writing about things other than web development and WordPress, and more than anything I miss the community aspect of blogging.
I’m not naïve; I know the blogging community will never return to the way it was a decade ago. But there does seem to be a resurgence of personal blogging and I am here for it. I think it’s what the world needs right now (not my blog specially, but personal blogs in general!).
I also know I have a horrible habit of starting new side projects and giving up on them after a couple of days/weeks and so I have absolutely no idea how returning to blogging is going to go. I’m not committing to anything and I’m not putting any unnecessary pressure on myself. I’ve bought a domain and this website is hosted on the hosting account I use for work, so the financial investment is minimal. I just want to experiment and see where things go from here.
What am I going to write about? I don’t know.
How often am I going to write? No idea.
Will I give up after writing a post or two? Your guess is as good as mine.
Anyway, let kick off this new blog by addressing a couple of questions you might have:
Why did you move on from Empfire?
I purchased the domain for Empfire when I was in college in around 2011/2012. A lot has changed since then and I’m not the same person I was over a decade ago. I like to think Empfire was a chapter of my life, and this is a new chapter.
I made the blog and all of its posts private because I wrote some cringy shit on there and I overshared some of the most personal moments in my life. As I got older, I realised I didn’t want all of that to be read by every man and his dog on the internet. There was nothing bad or offensive on there, but as I say, I was a teenager when I started writing that blog, and I used it to document some of my biggest moments in life.
I did write some pretty good posts if I do say so myself. In fact I might even migrate some of my favourite posts over to this blog. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here.
Right now, I need a fresh slate and that’s what I’m giving myself with this blog.
The name was also a contributing factor to the change. The name Empfire was a combination of two words that were also the names of songs by the band Kasabian; Empire and Fire.
Kasabian were my favourite band when I purchased the domain, but the lead singer pleaded guilty to assaulting his partner back in 2020 and was kicked out of the band as a result (rightly so). Since this incident I’ve felt icky about the name Empfire and its association with him, so I knew it was time for something new.
Why Hollyisms?
Hollyisms was a phrase coined by a friend of mine in secondary school because I use to say really stupid things and get common phrases and sayings completely messed up. I still do, to be fair.
My friend started a list of the random crap I would say and these were known as my Hollyisms. I wish I had still had the list, but sadly I don’t know. However I do clearly remember this one:
“You know Edam cheese? They make it backwards.”
The joke, of course, is Edam is Made backwards.
Anyway, this was the origin of Hollyisms and I thought it was the perfect name for my new personal blog. Because I have no doubt I’m going to say stupid things and get things wrong on here.
What’s with this design?
Ugh, tell me about it!
If you’re new here then it might come as a shock to know that I am in fact a web developer specialising in custom WordPress themes. Because here I am using a pre-made theme from the WordPress repository.
Creating a custom theme is time consuming, and after a long day of building WordPress themes for my clients, the last thing I want to do is build my own. I will probably get around to it some day, but in an effort to not get ahead of myself with my return to personal blogging, I’m keeping things simple and using a pre-made theme.
Well, that’s the first awkward “Hello World” post wrote and shared with the world. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope there’s more to come. 💞
Leave a Reply