One consolidated website about writing, ageing, learning and well-being
A single consolidated website: after years of flitting all over the internet, I’ve found a digital home and I shall try to stay right here. My digital footprints used to be everywhere. At 80, now or never, it’s time to stop travelling and settle down.
So this website, write into life, focuses on writing, ageing, learning and well-being. Poems and opinions to make you nod, smile or think. I’ll write about other topics too, but not about politics.
- I’m fascinated by the ways we use writing (and that includes blogging and scripted podcasting) to solve problems and improve our health and happiness.
- I think about my own advancing age, fear it, enjoy it, and brace myself for the years ahead. You may be doing this too.
- My latest books are mini-books of easy-read poems for those who are growing older, and who think about that sometimes.
Time to focus: trying to consolidate my web profile in one place
At this stage I was already a writer. Christchurch Girls High School, 1954. (That face was torn off by accident, not on purpose.)
In the early days of the web, every new project or role demanded that I set up yet another website, write yet another book, open yet another social media account—until my brain was a hundred open tabs flapping in the wind.
Muehlenbeckia astonii: this New Zealand plant grows by endless divarication and connnections
Divarication as a professional strategy
Do you know about New Zealand’s marvellous divaricating shrubs? Instead of growing branches from a trunk they grow by endless splitting. There’s no hierarchy, just a mass of twiglets crocheting themselves together into a dense anarchic ball. (The evolutionary justification was that this prevented bushes from being eaten by moa.)
That’s how I lived my online life. For 20 years, proliferation was my pattern. Now it’s time to concentrate, focus, consolidate my web profile.
Heavy-footed moa (pachyornus elephantopus). Image from ‘Extinct birds of New Zealand’ via nzbirdsonline.org.nz
Stop cluttering up cyberspace!
In 2016 I was about to create yet another website for a new project. Then a little voice said, “Stop! Focus, focus! Surely your WordPress site can handle this. Just make it work.”
Close up, the muehlenbeckia bush appears to be in a dither of indecision… but stand back and you’ll see a strong structure with a striking texture. It’s built on connections, like a blog.
This website aspires to be my only website.