I have spent a lot of time building websites that are supposed to have a purpose.
Sell this. Explain that. Rank for this. Convert that person. Make the navigation obvious. Keep the message focused.
All sensible things. Also, occasionally, absolutely exhausting.
Jenski was never really like that.
It was the place where I could write about Muay Thai, a place I had visited, some piece of technology, something I had worked out, a random thought, or whatever else had temporarily taken over my brain.
Then it disappeared into an old WordPress backup and stayed there for years.
I did not want to restore the old website
When I decided to bring it back, I realised quite quickly that I did not actually want the old site back.
I wanted the history.
I wanted the old posts, their dates, the original photos and the record of what I was interested in at the time. But I did not want to rebuild my current internet around a years-old WordPress installation just because that happened to be where the writing lived.
So the old site became an archive source, not the new foundation.
That distinction ended up shaping what Jenski is now.
It is not a niche
I have no interest in pretending all my interests fit neatly under one topic.
They do not.
I like disappearing down rabbit holes. I like places and the stories attached to them. I like working out how things work. I like useful tools. I like historical oddities. I like writing things down when I notice a pattern or learn something the hard way.
Sometimes I will write something researched and ridiculously detailed. Sometimes it will be a practical guide. Sometimes it may just be a thought I wanted to keep.
That is the point.
I do not want to manufacture content
One of the decisions I made while rebuilding the site was that empty sections are allowed to be empty.
If there is nothing worth putting in Rabbit Holes yet, it can say so. I would rather have a gap than publish filler because a content calendar says Tuesday needs a post.
The same applies to the old archive. Twenty-eight historical posts have been recovered into the new WordPress site, but they are drafts. Being public ten years ago does not automatically mean something should be public again today.
Some still feel like me. Some need factual checking. Some contain old links or old advice. A couple are better kept as evidence of the old site rather than republished verbatim.
History can be preserved without pretending nothing has changed.
The structure is deliberately broad
The new Jenski has six places for things to land:
- Rabbit Holes for the investigations that get out of hand;
- Things I Like for apps, tools, music, products and other things I genuinely rate;
- Places for somewhere I have been, found or become curious about;
- How It’s Done for things I have worked out and might want again later;
- Thoughts for exactly what it sounds like;
- Random for the things that refuse to behave.
That is enough structure to make the site usable without forcing the subject matter to become artificially tidy.
So what is Jenski for?
Mostly, it is somewhere to keep the things I do not want to lose.
If something turns out to be useful to somebody else, even better.
If a rabbit hole becomes a proper investigation, it has a home. If a place sends me searching through old maps and newspaper archives, it has a home. If I solve an annoying technical problem and know I will forget the answer in six months, it has a home.
And if I simply have something to say, that has a home too.
Not everything needs to become a business, a funnel or a personal-brand strategy.
Some things are allowed to be interesting.
That is Jenski.