You may have noticed that my website looks a little different (if you haven’t, please notice now). Well, I’ve been thinking for a while I should jazz it up, and I was sifting through WordPress themes to see what my options were and think about what I was going to do. I figured, with a chronic illness and a one-year-old in the picture, it would be best to plan meticulously, get everything I needed drawn, written and organised over a few weeks, and then pull it all together quickly and painlessly. Like a professional.

I’m sure you can guess the general direction this is going.

I ruined everything. I accidentally activated a new theme.

And I couldn’t just switch back to my old layout because a) I would have to re-do the aesthetics anyway just like I would on a new layout and b) I had CSSed the crap out of the old one so actually it would take much, much longer to re-do.

The only way out of the mess I had made was through.

I kissed goodbye to my beloved sidebar. I love the old-school blogger vibe, jam-packed with buttons and banners and links and titbits. But the look is dated, probably no one else likes them, and it only shows up on desktop which hardly anyone uses outside of work these days anyway.

We won’t linger on the new WordPress Site Editor [beta]. I do like the concept. It’s versatile. Makes all kinds of cool shit possible. But actually using it is kind of like trying to format anything in Word.

I stayed up past midnight several nights running. I built headers and footers. I re-jigged menus. I vectored logos. I tripled checked everything would not size weird or go to complete shit when viewed on tablets or mobile.

And then I got gastro.

I realised to make all the new site editor elements work the way I wanted to, I would have to go back into each individual post I had ever made—as in, back seven years ago to 2014—and change/add various meta-data elements I had been pretending didn’t exist because life is too hard to learn new things even if they make everything look much more professional.

And I don’t want to have a big, angsty moment here, but it’s really difficult to go look at old work. Like just … really difficult. I avoid it. I avoid it so much it’s the main reason I put off updating my site for so long in the first place.

After a while I became completely desensitised to it, which I guess means it functioned as DIY exposure therapy and maybe I’m emotionally stronger and a better creator having done it or something I don’t know FEELINGS I don’t like feelings especially ones about myself they bother me into the worst flustery run on sentences it’s much more comfortable to draw myself being horribly obliterated.

Back to nice, comfortable catastrophe. There was still heaps to get through and without the emotional distress melting my face off, it was just boring.

In short, the last couple of weeks have been A LOT.

But I did it.

Ta da.

Click around. Make yourself at home.

I know what you’re thinking. Fuck yes that header-logo-banner-whateveritis image is awesome, and you bet your gastro arse you can get it on a mug.

Now, excuse me while I go have a nap.