Jessica Nickelsen

Let's start from the basics: can you introduce yourself?

Hi, I'm Jessica. Jess really. I live in Wellington, New Zealand. I've lived in New Zealand on and off since 1990, when my family moved here from the States. My mother is a kiwi and Dad's american. They met when my dad came out to NZ as a ski instructor in the 60s.

I had a "very American" childhood and briefly went to Junior High School before moving. One of my favourite stories from that time is that everyone at my new school wanted to know if my old school was "like Beverly Hills 90210." I had to break it to them that no, my junior high in Vancover, Washington wasn't exactly the same, though we did have lockers and foosball tables and fake-cheese nachos for lunch, haha.

I went to university in NZ - a place called Otago University in Dunedin. It's a university town waaaaay down in the South Island. It's an awesome city, a bit wild--it even has an albatross colony. I started off as pre-med, because I always enjoyed science and maths at school, but then veered off when I failed Chemistry. I studied music, archaeology, geology, history, english. At one point I was going to do my degree in geology but then at the end I wound up doing English literature. Later on when I was working in IT and bored, I finished my honours degree, part-time. Somehow I studied the Old Norse language (we translated excerpts from the Eddas, as well as some amazing prose stuff) and also wrote my thesis on Literature and Technology. I think I've always been all over the place.

I still work in IT, and it's still boring, even though I am just part time these days (my husband and I have an eleven-year-old daughter and I do all the runaround stuff with her too). But maybe that lets me focus on everything else I do. I have a lot of hobbies, but I've probably run out of room to talk about them here. But a few that could be worth mentioning are my writing of course, as well as some assistant editorial stuff I do for Utopia Science Fiction magazine. I like taking photos and develop film as well. I play piano and do karate. I knit socks. I was a video game reviewer for ten years too.

What's the story behind your blog?

I actually have a few blogs. I think you found me through my writing one? I was wanting to self-publish some books and thought I needed a blog with my name on it to do it properly. That one has all of my books on it, but I guess my "real" blog is the one at discombobulated.co.nz, though that's had a few iterations over the years.

It started out in 2000, when I was doing my "OE" (or Overseas Experience, what kiwis call the migration of most NZ young people overseas for an indefinite period of time) in Dublin. I lived and worked there for about three years. I had another boring IT job and decided when I was sitting around waiting for releases (I was working as a localisation engineer at Microsoft) I might as well do something online. I found a service called Diary-x that some of your readers might remember. My domain in those days was herself.diary-x.com, but the blog itself was named "Discombobulated in Dublin." A sort of Sleepless in Seattle reference, I guess, but I really was discombobulated in those days so it seemed to fit.

That all fell over, and the owner confessed that he hadn't made any backups, or the backups had failed, or something. It was my first introduction to the concept of resiliency and I guess it was a good lesson, because I still adhere to the concept of 3-2-1 with most of my stuff. Later I moved to Wordpress like everyone else, and I think it was then that I first bought my domain (discombobulated.co.nz). I like having a 'co.nz' domain. I think it's cute. I'm in the process of trying to bring over all of my old wordpress posts but that may take some time.

What does your creative process look like when it comes to blogging?

My blog is a completely personal one, so I don't tend to write multiple drafts or get proofreading done. I figure any typos or weirdness is just part of the experience, which is less about a professional image and more of a slice-of-life moment.

I've always struggled with the way blogging changed so much and became just another way for people to market things or sell you stuff. I really did enjoy how it was back in the early days, where you would follow people and get a sense of their internal monologues, what it was like for them to live in certain places. I've always loved having little windows into other people's lives.

So basically my process is, I go, "hm, it's been a while, I should probably do a blog post." And sometimes I start with the weather, or I have some news I want to write about. Or I look back through some recent photographs and find one I want to write about. Sometimes I note down quotes I like from books I'm reading, or the post might turn into a longer piece about an actual topic. But most of the time they are just stream-of-consciousness brain dumps. (Sorry.)

I guess it is pretty self-absorbed, really, writing like this and making it public. But I just think back on those blogs that I really loved in the past, and how it made me feel when I read them. And I sort of want to re-create that, I guess. So those are my touchstones, in a way. A vague guiding principle.

Do you have an ideal creative environment? Also do you believe the physical space influences your creativity?

I'm not too concerned about where I write, although I really don't like the feeling that someone might be behind me, looking over my shoulder. I used to work in an open office, back in my office IT days, and I could never get used to the feeling.

For the most part I write at my desk in my study--I have a mac mini and a nice big screen. (I also work from home, but that's on a windows machine, so everything is pretty separate.) I'm also quite happy typing in bed on my laptop too; for some reason generally I find writing in bed works really well for me. On the weekends I really like opening the door to the balcony by the bed and sitting there to write.

I keep quite a few notebooks and I journal in those, but composing a blog post in a notebook feels a little strange. Recently I've set up a chair outside the study, under some punga ferns that hang over the fence there, and I have found that sitting there with a notebook, and brain.fm on my headphones has been pretty wild in terms of getting into the zone.

Probably like most people I'm drawn to beautiful photos of desks in minimal offices, or a spot at a beautiful cafe, but to be honest by the time I'm in the flow of writing I hardly even notice my surroundings. I'm in that in-between space, somewhere between the text on the screen and my brain.

I'd love to work other places apart from home, but the libraries in New Zealand are pretty much public spaces these days, and because most of them are small and suburban (our big one in Wellington is currently out of action due to earthquake strengthening) there aren't many places to just find a quiet desk. There's also a bit of a mood among cafes where they don't seem to like you "bludging" a seat for too long. Of course there are coworking spaces--I even signed up for one a while ago, but they are pretty expensive and it's just a bit hard to justify.

A question for the techie readers: can you run us through your tech stack?

Sure! My writing blog is one of those Jekyll templates hosted on GitHub pages, though I am looking at simplifying that. (It also got a really bad score on the websitecarbon.com website, which is another reason I'm considering moving.) What I do really like about it is that I have the site mirrored locally, and I can edit the html and css in Zed (https://zed.dev) (currently my code editor of choice, though I sometimes go back to Vim). I like writing a post in a text file and then pushing a copy out to where it's hosted. It feels more like writing that way.

My personal blog is similar, though I use Blot.im for that. All the files sit on Dropbox, and everything just syncs and updates as I edit them. I have the templates and structure sitting there and it's very easy to make changes.

I recently implemented a weird sort of flow though, involving Obsidian and an automator folder monitoring workflow. I have, in Obsidian, a Blog folder, with drafts and posts subfolders. I create a draft blog post based on a template I've created with the right YAML front matter, write it in Obsidian, and then when I'm ready, I drag it over to the posts folder. Once it arrives there, automator kicks in and makes a copy to my Blot folder.

I like writing blog posts in markdown in Obsidian; everything syncs to GitHub pretty easily. The only faff is with implementing photos, which I usually resize by hand and copy to an assets folder within the Blot structure. But it's easy enough to implement without too much flicking around.

I don't know if this seems really weird or not. But I've come to realise that I really dislike writing anything in a web browser; everything just feels very slow and mouse-oriented. My next challenge is to try and find a newsletter option that I can use in a similar way. If anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Both my domains are registered through 1stdomains.nz. I couldn't even tell you why I first signed up with them. The site is a bit clunky but I like that they are a kiwi company.

Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?

Going way back, I think despite everything that happened with the diary-x fiasco, it was a really great place to hang out and meet other people online. (I even reconnected with someone on micro.blog who I had been friends with back in those days; it was very surreal!) I think all I would do differently really is make sure I kept even some basic text copies of what I'd written--even the wayback machine hasn't been able to find everything.

I do think that using Wordpress was a bit of a lesson in how hard it can be to get everything out of a hulking CMS. Yes there are some good scripts that can do it, but I still have over three hundred posts that I have to now go back through and sort the links for images. It's just turned into a complete chore.

More recently, I think I wish I'd just used the shortened version of my name for the author blog. Jess Nickelsen rather than Jessica Nickelsen. It seems like a small thing, but Jess feels more like me. Maybe I'll just do it, heh!

Financial question since the web is obsessed with money: how much does it cost to run your blog? Is it just a cost or does it generate some revenue? And what's your position on people monetising personal blogs?

The domain names are around $30 NZ a year, each. Blot is about $20 USD a year, because I got in on early pricing quite a few years ago. I think it's around $60 a year now.

(I also have mini blogs with omg.lol; those are $20 USD a year but I think I subscribed when they were having a sale. I also pay for micro.blog because I really like what they are doing there and it's a lovely community. That's $5 USD a month.)

I don't have anything against people monetising their blogs at all, but don't you think that a monetised blog has a different feel? They become more...performative? Less of a window and more of a presentation? I guess in my mind I separate those sort of blogs out into the same realm as recipe blogs or youtube channels. It becomes more about a business and less about openness. And while I completely understand that for some people this is their main form of income, I almost wish there was another name for "this sort of thing," other than "blog."

I'm really still just working out my thoughts on the whole thing. Maybe my stumbling block is that I'm a Gen-Xer who remembers when all of this was just a giant playground, and now it's all become quite serious.

Time for some recommendations: any blog you think is worth checking out? And also, who do you think I should be interviewing next?

Ohh, this is hard. There are so many interesting blogs out there, and I love that this is a problem. It was awesome to see you interviewing some bloggers who I genuinely love reading (like Adrianna Tan, Derek Sivers and Winnie Lim). Here are a few other blogs that I really like:

• arnoldhoogerwerf.nl - he does all sorts of interesting field recordings in nature and sometimes makes films to accompany them
• wonderpens.ca - though they are a stationery shop, this is a commercial blog I genuinely enjoy; sincere and well-written, with lovely photography.
• saigonboy.me I discovered this blog while I was investigating Montaigne.io (which still looks pretty cool; a blog created via apple notes?) This is a snippety sort of travel blog, with illustrations rather than photographs. I really like it.
• danwang.co - Dan Wang pretty much does just one post a year, but I've been reading them for a few years now and always feel smarter and more human after reading them.
• muan.co - I like Mu-An Chiou's blog (it's dreamy) but she's also got a nice mix of personal and professional there too.
• robertvanvliet.com - Robert Van Vliet's blog is a nice example of how I'd like to bring my two blogs together. He also seems quite dreamy and artsy as well as being techy, which is a nice combination.
• brainbaking.com - I think Winnie Lim also recommended this blog. It's another one of my favourites as well.

Final question: is there anything you want to share with us?

Thanks to mental floss I was able to track down the very first web page I think I ever visited on the internet: Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches. It gave me such genuine delight to know this page still exists!

Also check out Anthony Alvarado's DIY Magic. It's such a great book on creativity!