just setting up my weblog

i don't know how to start a blog. what i mean to say is, i just kind of want to dive into the middle part, where i can write about whatever i feel like and maybe post some photos or some recipes, or do the adhd thing where i excitedly ramble about very specific topics that make my friends' eyes glaze over after ten minutes, or maybe recommend a book or do a rant.

i made a few posts on medium before they went bananas, and i have certainly had a livejournal or three in my time, but this is a new setting and framework and context, right, and having a completely green field is wildly intimidating. so i'm just not gonna think about it too hard, for now, and make some posts.

shout out to everyone on twitter last year who told me about ghost + digital ocean when i was asking for recommendations for self-hosted blogs. despite almost 10 years in the tech industry as a software engineer, it is with a heavy heart that i must admit that i have no idea how to make a website from scratch.

do i need to do an about me, here? how does this work? i'm haley, she/her, born in early 90s, grew up in napa valley and moved to sf at 17, now living in oakland with my husband (a soon to be funemployed molecular biologist) and cat (13, grumpy, perfect). i do the tech thing, went to usf and got my bachelor's in computer science, tried to make it work in music tech startups and wound up in enterprise software instead. switched from android development to people management and am much better suited to it.

i don't plan on this being a tech blog - my therapist says i need to find a creative outlet to bring more balance into my life, you know, pursue all the different facets of my personality and express them. most of my personality is food, so, that's probably what you're gonna get here. recipes i have tried and liked, recipes i have adapted or "developed," maybe some musings on beer or wine or sake or whatever else fun is going on. i like to experiment with fermentation, i have a haphazard garden in my backyard, i am awful at baking but end up in a bread phase every few years like clockwork. i like using my pressure cooker but nobody has a website for the brand i have so maybe i can share some Hot Tips. don't forget to like and subscribe!

p.s. ghost, the open source blogging platform i am using for this site, doesn't come with a comments module built in and i dont know how to do web sites so if anyone wants to show me how to self host discourse or coral and embed that here then let me know. but only if everyone promises to be nice