There’s been some changes around here. It may be a delayed response to the fresh start a new year seems to bring, but I’ve finally decided to buy myself a custom domain. After years of promising to investigate the idea further, January 2019 was the month that I finally went ahead with it.
Yet it’s one thing having the desire to change URLs, without knowing what that new domain would be. I had two choices: to stick with the same branding which I’ve had since the beginning, or follow the trend within journalism and other creative mediums to have your name be your brand.
And so, The Life of a Thinker has gone. A clumsy brand created when I was just 15 expanded to become my own online identity. This was, of course, fine, but still pulled me back to 2012 when a lot has changed on my site since then. With Liam O’Dell, there isn’t that feeling of ambiguity or being bound to the past – primarily because it’s my name.
Yet with this has come the decision to make a large amount of my older content private. Posts accepting blog awards or providing Weekly Updates on my life have gone, the more informal, chatty style of conversation moving over to my YouTube channel. The homepage of this site has changed too, to allow for more posts to be seen and read.
However, the mass archiving of older content has reduced the number of articles on this website to just over 200. The question now is what comes next, and what am I doing to boost that figure.
Since the start of 2019, content has been flowing steadily on this website, but it was nothing like the Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday schedule I had in the past. The creative crisis I wrote about before has returned, but I am hoping that such a redesign will prompt me to maintain some sense of rhythm going forward.
I already know that music will continue to be a big part of this website. I’m in a position where I know my reviews still need some work, but much like how my opinion pieces have gotten better over time, I hope my music posts will also improve in 2019.
If you followed my website/blog last year, then you’ll probably agree that for me, 2018 was ‘the year of theatre’. I saw 17 shows (writing about all but one of them) and theatre pieces have to be one of my favourite pieces to do on this site. I’ve been fortunate to have been invited to see and review shows in London and I’m already eyeing up a few more productions this year, so I have no plans to stop making that type of content in the future.
In short, there’s a newfound drive for me to put more into my blog this year, and to take it more seriously (not that I haven’t already). I had previously decided that this site was going to be an online portfolio instead of a blog, and these latest changes are just an extension of that.
So take a look around and let me know what you think. I’m excited to see what this year brings.
Photo: Ollie Cole.
Liam O'Dell 