“Simplicity” means not changing things

In Baty.net • What do I even mean by “Simple?”, I was looking for a definition of “simple”. I aspire to simplicity, but never seem to find it.

For example, I switched my daily.baty.net blog between Kirby and Tinderbox three times in three days. One day, I want posting to be simple, so I use Kirby, because it’s an easy-to-use CMS. The next day, I want hosting to be simple, so I go back to using Tinderbox as an SSG because static sites are simple to host.

The same thing happens with baty.blog vs baty.net. Simple means just typing stuff and hitting “Publish”, right? WordPress makes that so easy, I should just use that. But then Zola is just markdown files generating a static website, so that’s what I mean by simple.

And photography? Digital photography is the simple option. I don’t have to deal with film and scanning or darkroom printing or any of that. Or maybe film photography is simpler. Really, using a small, manual Leica means all I need is a roll of film, a light bulb, and some chemicals. A fully manual camera is simple because there are no settings to fiddle with and it doesn’t even need a battery! Or wait, a modern digital camera is even simpler because I can just point and shoot without thinking about focus or exposure or ISO, etc.

Taking notes using markdown files in a folder couldn’t be simpler. I can use anything to edit them. And maybe Obsidian to manage everything. No, that gets too complex. Instead, my stable and very personal Emacs configuration is the simplest thing, right? Everything is right there in Emacs. All my notes for the past 10 years or so are in org-mode files. Simple!

Thing is, I switch between all of those options so often it makes me dizzy. No matter what I’m using or how I’m using it, the other thing eventually looks simpler to me, so I switch.

You know what would be the simple solution to simplicity? Stop changing everything all the time! If I would just lean into Emacs and be done with it, my writing/note-taking/task management system would be done and done. If I would realize that I’m emotionally inclined to using an SSG for publishing, I could post everything here using Zola. Simple as can be.

Anyway, long story short, the key to simplicity isn’t finding the simplest possible thing. The trick is to stop looking.

But will I ever be able to stop looking?