Cover artwork (cover.png) for the article titled To a New Beginning.

To a New Beginning

3 min read

I’ve been quiet here for about a week—six days, to be exact—because I took time off work and from posting to do something I’ve been meaning to do for a while: migrate this blog from WordPress to a brand-new setup built with Astro. It’s not finished, not perfect, and certainly not “final,” but it’s already miles ahead of what it was before. And the process has reminded me why I wanted this space in the first place: freedom.

WordPress, for all its history and plugin ecosystem, comes with its own constraints. It can be extended, yes, but never cheaply—many of the features I wanted to integrate were locked behind subscriptions, paid add-ons, or awkward workarounds. I found myself in a strange position: investing more time fighting the system than actually writing. At some point I thought, I could code this better myself. And I did.

So I made the decision to move. Not because WordPress was “bad,” but because I wanted to build something that felt like mine from the ground up. Astro gives me that. It gives me control over theming, layout, design, and presentability in a way I couldn’t have before. It gives me the ability to create and refine features myself, rather than wait for someone else’s plugin update. Most importantly, it gives me proper LaTeX support—something WordPress sorely lacked, and something I’ve been waiting on before committing to more rigorous mathematical and technical posts. That alone makes this migration worthwhile.

There’s still work to be done, and you’ll see changes and updates over the weeks to come, but I’m excited. Because now I can shape this blog into the kind of space I always wanted it to be: not just a feed of posts, but a living canvas for ideas, experiments, and conversations.

And the truth is, I wouldn’t have taken this step if it weren’t for you. When I started this blog a few months ago, I thought maybe a few dozen people might stumble across my writing. Instead, we’ve now reached around 500 returning visitors a month, with ~360 of you just last week alone. Numbers aren’t everything, but they do tell a story: that there’s a community forming here, that my meanderings are not just mine but resonate with others who think and feel along similar lines. That’s humbling. Truly.

So thank you. For reading, for returning, for connecting in whatever way you have. I hope this new iteration of the blog—with its incremental upgrades, cleaner presentation, and better support for the kinds of essays I’ve long wanted to share—will help us build something more than just a site. A small community, perhaps. A place to recognize one another, to exchange thoughts, and to keep moving together in pursuit of whatever it is that brought us here in the first place.

Here’s to the next chapter.

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