I had almost decided that I would not publish anything today. My blog got unpublished as the trial ran out, and I felt frustrated that I couldn't get help from anyone from the platform. I still am. Can I trust a platform if it can't guarantee support and get the working of basic functionality right?

But I am not letting this #meta concern break my streak of publishing the thoughts. Life updates have to wait as I publish another meta update.

I have undone most of the configurations and have set up the redirects. Setting things up with a trial account as if it were a fully working project was a mistake. But then, I didn't expect basic functionality like payment to fail for a paid service. International payments are hard; I am surprised the platform didn't hit this problem earlier.

I wonder if I even want this update on my blog as I write this. When I started regularly publishing at this place, I thought the posts would be more personal. A slice of my life. But then, I had also said this space has no structure. No throughline. It contains what is at the top of my mind.

Venting my frustration about the platform is that today. So that's what I publish. I hope things sort out before I sit down for tomorrow's session. Another chance to set things right.

There is a sudden rise in minimal blogging engines that claim to have simple, no-nonsense writing interfaces. I guess many developers realise there is no point in fighting the big platforms like WordPress and Ghost on the features they are pros at. Strip out everything bloggers do not want and call that a simple system. But it is difficult to be simple and still attract users — you can't roll out the same features WordPress has, just in black and white.

As I have noted in a couple of #meta posts till now, write.as does it well. It has got a brilliant writing interface and a wonderful default reading experience. It is not minimal. It is just pleasant enough. And it is in this restrained form that it achieves simplicity and yet looks and behaves aesthetically to appeal to users.

In quest of going minimal, many systems strip out the polish off the features they provide. They look ugly. To me, it matters how the systems look. If where I write doesn't give me a pleasant vibe, I may not visit the place that often. I am picky about the fonts in the places I read stuff at. Flaunting system default fonts is not my definition of simplicity.

A simple system is not one that makes and gives no choices. Instead, it makes bold, opinionated choices.

Another thing that works in write.as's favour is that I can hardly change anything with how things look. Theming that is possible is bare. Customization in the way things work is minimum. This will ensure I don't get too distracted by anything that's not words, the #meta stuff.

Of course, there is a risk of me getting frustrated with the loss of control. Well, there's Micro.blog for that which I am not getting rid of any time soon. The platform is too valuable and near perfect not to keep as primary.

Haven't I gone through a similar fascination with Svbtle? I wrote a lot there for a while but eventually got frustrated with how restricting it felt. So why's write.as any different? Well, for one, it allows publishing a titleless post. Second, the interface to post is minimal, with very little to configure. Svbtle felt bloated in that regard.

So where does this leave me? Well, I have started a 14-days trial with write.as. I want to try it to the fullest and see if and how well I use it. Is this just a fad?

I started working on a side project today that I know, deep down, I do not have time or energy for. Yet, I began because I wanted hard not to change too many things with my writing process. But I am not happy with how things are set up today. It's the same old battle.

I get bored with the setup I have. I find faults. And Micro.blog, my primary hosting platform, doesn't want to fix the editor. I don't gravitate to the posting page, so I write less. This platform needs a good editor (at least I am), and I wanted to attempt to build one. A couple of hours down the rabbit hole, I know I don't want to do that. There's a reason why I stopped hosting my blogging engines. It requires attention that my life cannot afford.

Some might say I don't write much because I don't want to. Never blame the tools and like that. But then I open the editor here at write.as, and the place feels welcoming — with its blinking cursor waiting for my thoughts, unformed as they may be. I start writing, and before I know it, I have a few thoughts jotted down. Sure, often they are #meta thoughts, as of now.

But that's blogging to me. No fixed pattern, no predefined topics, and no forced post lengths. So the editor need not be so bare that I lose interest. It also need not be so polished that I feel burdened. This place looks to have got the balance right.