SEB’s domain name expires on September 9th and I’m debating on whether or not I should renew it. There are a number of factors contributing to this not the least of which is how infrequently I blog these days. It seems my days of writing lengthy posts pontificating on whatever happened to catch my attention are very few and far between compared to the early days of SEB. I don’t know if that’s an indication of having said all I have to say or a growing sense of apathy about the things I used to be passionate about. Most of my entries are throwaways that are barely worth dropping by the site to see. I haven’t even followed through in a decision I made awhile back to practice writing short stories on the blog to develop that skill further.
Further adding to the sense of malaise is the recent escalation of the civil war going on in the Atheist community. For the past year, since at least the events of ElevatorGate, there’s been a raging shitstorm that has come to a head with one faction deciding it’s time to become proto-religious with a new movement they’re calling Atheism+ and they’re demanding people choose which side they’re going to be on lest they decide for them. I’ve seen people I respect in both camps stoop to new lows in the ongoing debate battle over the atheism “movement” and who’s going to control it and, frankly, I’m sick of the whole thing. I’ve deleted all atheism specific blogs from my blogroll (along with many I’m just not reading anymore or that are defunct) and will follow my own fucking path. This isn’t to say that I won’t talk about atheism and religion if I should continue on with SEB, but for the moment I’m too disgusted with the so-called movement to pay them any attention.
The third and final issue that’s prompting this possible abandonment of blogging is the ongoing malware issue SEB has been suffering from. I realize, now, that it was a mistake to move from ExpressionEngine to WordPress. This system is so full of holes and the community is so unhelpful (I had to figure out the WordPress XML import format on my own just to make the transition) that it’s been way more of a hassle than it’s been worth. The templating system is a nightmare, I’ve had to install way more plugins than should be necessary to get it to do what I want, and it seems once the malware gets its hooks into your site getting rid of it is extremely difficult. As you can see, I’ve had to drop to the default template and remove every plugin in my latest attempt to fix things. Things like the SEB Podcasts are now unplayable, most of the anti-comment spam systems are gone (I have reinstalled akismet) which means the moderation queue is filling up fast, and general usability enhancements like being able to edit your comments or the formatting toolbar are gone. All of that and there’s still no guarantee the malware won’t be back. Clearly I’m too much of an idiot for WordPress.
I’ve been at this for ten and a half years now. When I started blogging there were only a few blogs talking about the stuff I cared about. Now there are tons of them and many of them do a much better job of it than I ever have(and are way more popular to boot). I’ve come close to quitting before and I always found a reason to continue on. Now I’m at that point again and I’m doing some major self-reflection to see which decision I should go with.
I suppose I have till September 9th to figure it out.
