(Re)Establishing an Online Presence

As 2021 stubbornly carries on, and the end of this Ph.D. thing I've been doing for the past couple of years slowly comes to a close, I find myself (finally) looking to re-establish a presence on the web. I've had a site before, this same site, with the same software, and yet it didn't represent who I was becoming. So I shut it down. Wiped it away. I'm sure there is a backup somewhere. But it is not time for looking back, instead, it is time to look ahead.

So here I start. I've got the core of my site (stevenrick.com) running on GitHub Pages (don't ask me how long I have been telling myself to start using a static site) and of course here I've got a sort of journal starting to take form. Yes, it's running on Ghost (again). This time around I am excited to give myself an excuse to write more. To externalize the processes I am engaged in. To more publicly reflect on my work, on the world. And to engage in some good old-fashioned distributed cognition. Because words stay in your head they just swirl and twist, but when you externalize them, get them out, they take a static representation and become something that can promote reflection. I think that is what I am most looking forward to.

With that, I begin. May this be the beginning of a new and long-lasting habit. Should all go well, new posts will appear at least monthly. I hope to take time to elaborate on the things that don't make it into my academic papers and projects. I might even share side projects and other musings if they seem fitting. To anyone reading this, I hope you tag along. Feel free to reach out to me by email or find me on social media - steven (at) stevenrick (dot) com