Earlier this year, I announced an end to the Culinary Saijiki blog and podcast in order to focus on developing the book manuscript. The first five months of a year were a struggle in that regard. The structure I’d tried wasn’t working, and at the end of May, I scrapped the whole endeavor and started over. While that does put me behind schedule with my initial goal of completing a manuscript by the end of the year, it was the right call. Those first several months of struggling actually gave me some great insight for what I want the book to me, so the effort was not wasted. (Clara of Hmm That’s Interesting touches on the value of failed effort in her recent post “let’s talk about AI,” which I recommend.)
As I have also mentioned on various platforms, the word I selected for 2024 was “Simplicity.” And yes, I am still taking on too many volunteer opportunities and projects and hobbies. And no, my house is not the clutter-free space I’m hoping to get to but never reach. But using the word as a guiding principle has nonetheless helped me find areas where I can minimize.
One of the things I decided to do was get rid of the independent Culinary Saijiki website. At the start of this year I was managing three different sites: this one, Culinary Saijiki, and my Pilates studio site. One of the things I realized is that I genuinely hate having to maintain multiple website. Even though the Culinary Saijiki site was just an archive, it was still out there, still needed security and tech updates, and still cost money. And when I found out my plan rate was going up, I decided to export everything to this blog and host it here.
All Culinary Saijiki blog posts and podcast episodes now live here. I have organized everything on this page: https://allysonwhipple.com/the-culinary-saijiki/. I still own the original URL, and it redirects there, so anyone who has the old site bookmarked can access things easily. And I’ll keep posting project updates here as they become relevant.
Thanks to all who supported the initial phase of this project. Phase 2 has had some challenges, but I’m glad to finally be making real progress.