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My mind is always a bit sharper during these cold, bitter wintry months, especially in the morning after a good cup of black coffee. Indeed, I’m writing this post while sipping coffee in the wee hours of a very cold morning. Dr. Wife and Nugget, the three-legged wonder dog, are still fast asleep; Murphy and I have been up for about thirty minutes. The old girl (Murphy, not Dr. Wife) is munching on a beef rawhide in the other room as the morning light slowly pierces through the grey of January.
These early hours are about as close as I get to the hermit’s life these days. It’s quiet to focus on writing, spending time with God, reading the Bible, and knocking out whatever little tasks need doing.
In putting together these TBT posts, it’s always fun—and occasionally cringe-inducing—to look back at posts from yesteryear. One of the joys of maintaining a daily blog for seven years—whoa!—is the ability to explore my own, evolving time capsule.
It’s one of the things I love about WordPress.com. It’s very easy to find my old posts and link to them instantly. Oftentimes, I’ve forgotten about some of the topics I’ve covered over the years (in searching for “coffee” this morning, I found a post about coffee glasses). Links are insanely easy, especially if you use the “Classic” block—still my preferred method of writing using WordPress.com:
I currently use the $8/month “Premium” plan, which features the functionality I crave (for plug-ins, however, you’ll need the $25/month “Business” plan). It boasts 13 GB a storage, which might not sound massive in our age of terabyte SSDs, but is more than ample when you’re mostly uploading pictures of your dog:
Also, WordPress.com is constantly throwing coupons at me. It’s rare that I actually pay full-freight for my plan (which is billed annually). For example, WordPress.com‘s sister site, Pressable, is offering 15% plans with code 2025PRESS15AFF. I can’t speak to the functionality of Pressable firsthand, simply because I haven’t used it, but it offers hosting services for ecommerce sites, developers, and the like.
For everyday use, however, WordPress.com is fantastic. I love the “Classic” blocks because I’m used to working with the formatting ribbon included, but the sheer number of available blocks is impressive:
I literally just realized there’s a “Slideshow” block—my mind is already envisioning compelling slide decks of koi pond pics once the weather warms up!
I’ve been really pleased with the functionality of WordPress.com, which also comes with Jetpack built in. Jetpack has functionality I’ve only begun to explore; that said, I love its Akismet anti-spam system. According to Akismet, it’s blocked 13,830 spam comments in the past six months alone—and 141,377 over seven-plus years I’ve been writing this blog:
Well, enough of my yakking. If you’re like me, these cold, dark months are the perfect time to brew up some coffee, pet your dog, and start your own blog at WordPress.com. Blogging has opened up so many doors for me, and the switch to WordPress.com back in Summer 2018 has been life-changing. I may be a hermit, but I love the little community we’ve built here around TPP. I have several readers who are bloggers, and many more who should be blogging.
I’d love to see our little community grow further. WordPress.com makes it easy to get blogging, but I’m here to help!
With that, here is 2 January 2025’s “TBT^4: The Hermit’s Life“:
The Portly Politico 