Ava

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

I'm Ava, from Germany and I am working with pharmaceutical databases fulltime. I'm also a parttime law student and enrolled in a separate course to become a data protection officer. When I am not studying or writing my blog, I like to do different creative things like pixel art or glitch art, sewing or embroidery, or I am exercising. I especially love the treadmill, indoor cycling, pilates and yoga.

What's the story behind your blog?

I originally planned it as just a side thing to document my progress through completing The Odin Project, learning Rust, modding my Steam Deck and writing custom CSS themes for it, as well as any general tech things like my desk setup, my Linux ricing and more. But I got very sick, and I had barely any energy for any of this especially on top of my work and studies, so I opened it up thematically, starting with a post addressing my health issues. Slowly, I chose to share more, and documenting my coding process or projects have moved more in the background. But now that I am better, I might feature more of that.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

I write them on the phone in the default Notes app. I often think of the best things when I try to fall asleep; then I write it all off my chest into my phone and when I'm done, I finally sleep. No bullet points, it's the full text, and I only read over it once or twice to catch mistakes or weird wording, then it's ready to go. I schedule many of my posts to release later, even if it's just an hour. If it's very personal or I'm not sure, I might let it sit in the drafts for weeks.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I'm usually in the bathtub or in bed when writing my posts, I am very rarely actually at the desk or on a laptop. I heard of people needing a very specific environment to write, like being on their desk, a specific time, coffee, quiet; it's not like that for me. When I get an idea for a post and write it down, it feels like being struck by lightning. Suddenly there's all this text in my head, and I can barely write as fast as the sentences run down in my head. So occasionally it happens that I am not in bed or in the bathtub during, and I just pull out my phone whereever I am and furiously type and I cannot stop or focus on anything else until that's done. I've jokingly compared it to being some kind of conduit.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

The blog is hosted on Bearblog, the little coding I have to do for it is done in the on-site editor. The domain is from Porkbun. My website itself is hosted on Nekoweb, a static site hoster; I was previously on Neocities. I know some people prefer to host their blogs themselves and/or use SSGs to automatically generate and update their blogs, and I commend them for all that effort! But I try to make it as easy for me as possible without having to fix much, worry about rates and uptime or anything like that.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

Nothing, I am very happy.

Financial question since the Web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost, or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

I paid a one-time lifetime payment for Bearblog that was about 190 Euro, I think. My domain renews yearly for $16.88. I pay a monthly fee of 7,99 Euro to a provider handling legal notice mail for me; in Germany, depending on your content, you need to provide your contact details, including your address, on your website. Since me and others don't want to doxx ourselves, there are services providing an address you can offer instead, and they'll send you any mail that comes in for you.

So all in all, recurring costs are low. My blog doesn't generate revenue, and that's fine, I find the thought a bit weird. When I see other people monetizing their blogs, I think that's good for them, but I'm not feeling it for my posts and don't like the potential of money transforming how or what I post.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

I think Robert Birming of birming.com could be interesting, as well as Jedda from JCProbably.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

I also have a blog where I review and talk about matcha. It's at emeraldsip.cafe.