When I first thought to write a post commemorating the new year I wasn’t sure there was anything to write about. But I did then think of a few things, and here they are. I’ll leave out personal and work stuff, since it’s not appropriate for a public blog; that mainly leaves stuff related to my public writing. Let’s start with the key items of 2024:
Moving my personal website to Hugo. I’d been increasingly frustrated with using Jekyll to manage my frankhecker.com website. I went looking for another static site generator, decided Hugo was the best choice for what I wanted to do, and spent a couple of weeks a year ago converting my old site to work with Hugo. I also made several other improvements, outlined in the blog post “New year, new blog.” I hope this will be the last re-architecture of the site I will want or need to make. (Although I don’t rule out updating the blog theme, especially if I could find a suitable person I could pay to do the work.)
Coping with the end of Cohost. Ironically enough, after I revamped my personal website I did no writing at all specifically for the site. Instead I devoted my attention to the Cohost social media site and did all my writing there, for reasons I’ve previously explained. All told, the almost two years I spent writing on Cohost for my followers, and reading what others had to say, were the most fun and rewarding I’ve ever experienced in my life online.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end sooner or later. For Cohost it was sooner, as financial reality caught up with its staff and owners, the site went read-only on October 1, 2024, and it will shut down completely sometime soon.
Fortunately Cohost staff provided an export mechanism, and I’ve recreated almost all of my Cohost posts on this site, dated to the date I originally published them. (The major exception is my “Sunday night poetry” series, for which see below.) As an extra precaution I’ve requested that the Internet Archive save a final copy of all my Cohost posts in the Wayback Machine, and I’ve updated Cohost-related posts on this site to point to the archived copies.
Writing at Okazu. I’ve been reading Erica Friedman’s Okazu blog and associated Yuricon website, ever since I got interested in yuri manga, and have been a site supporter and participant in the Okazu discord for a few years now. After the debut of GAP: The Series I also got interested in Thai yuri (aka GL) live-action shows, wrote a couple of reviews for Okazu as a guest reviewer, and then had the honor of being named a staff writer at the beginning of June 2024, with my self-chosen “beat” being live-action series from Southeast and East Asia.
What about the new year? 2025 will likely see one or two major changes in my life, but I’m not ready to talk about them yet. My main commitment is to recreate my “Sunday night poetry” series here, with some added poets and poems. I’ll also continue reviewing for Okazu, and plan to take some of my Bluesky comments and turn them into blog posts when and where that makes sense.
Beyond that, things are up in the air. I definitely plan to do some learning, but I’m not ready to publicly commit to what yet. In the meantime, Happy New Year to all of you who stumble on this post! You have my best wishes for a joyful and successful 2025.