You don't need a /now page
Earlier this year I moved my blog from WordPress to Eleventy. During this
process I had rediscovered /now pages. After consuming all of the confirmation
bias out there that's trying to suck up to Derek Sivers (nothing personal,
I think you're great), I decided I too needed a /now page.
Fast forward 6 months or so, I can safely say that I don't need a /now page.
You may not agree with me, but I doubt you need one either.
Personally speaking, I've committed to weekly diatribes, and have done so for nearly 2 decades now. Because of this, my body of work serves as an ever growing back catalog of whatever shit I was up to at the time.
The burden of maintenance
Having an evergreen piece of content like a dedicated page to discuss whatever was going on in my life at the time is just one additional piece of content I have to maintain. This is content I've had to maintain on top of weekly posts. This is content that over time was deprioritized, left to collect dust and be forgotten.
Sure, if you don't post weekly, a /now page is probably a great way to feign
that you keep your website up to date. But why not just put pen to paper and
talk about those things outright as blog posts?
If you browse the official website for /now pages, you'll see that a
lot of folks drop off. Most of what I saw out there was quite stale, assuming
the sites were even online anymore at all.
Own your history/herstory
Since a /now page is just the current moment in time, it loses all historical
significance. While Archive.org may have a few snapshots along the way, your
actual website doesn't. This seems backwards to me as I consider my blog more of
a journal, a la Jordan Mechner.
While your content may seem up to date and actively maintained by the robots scraping you, you lose out on the depth. You can't tell me that 10 years of individual posts is somehow worse for wear compared to a single page updated for 10 years.
Who's it really for?
Don't take this the wrong way, but does anybody really care what you're up to on a regular basis? Most people have their head shoved way too far up their own ass to care that you're doing a thing right now.
I tend to not be very defeatist, but this is one of those situations where I think nobody gives a crap about whatever it is I'm up to at such a granular level. People are much more interested in learning how to do things or solve problems, which is where I focus a lot of my blogging efforts.
That said, the page is probably more for you than anybody consuming it.
You done yet?
Yeah, I'm done. For today at least as I'd rather get back to song writing as I've been engaged in quite regularly these days.
To recap, I think /now pages are a self-serving waste of time. But like most
things, I'll probably revisit this down the road. If I do, I'll probably just
setup a microblogging stream. Perhaps forcing myself to post daily or multiple
times a day. Hell, could treat it like a stand up every morning. Maybe even let
some robots take the posts and compile them into a weekly and monthly summary.
As I type this all out, maybe there's a good idea hiding in all of this ranting.
Until then though, I'll be removing my /now page and y'all can just go back to
guessing what it is I'm up to.