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Blog Updates – March 2020 (Introducing HeyNico.com!)

With a new URL and a cleaner look, here’s to the relaunch of Nico In Real Life!

HEY!!

It has been a long, long time since this blog got any meaningful updates and it certainly had some cobwebs that I had to dust off when I logged in for the first time in a while a few weeks ago.

Looking back, it was a year ago now when I officially started this blog but it came to a grinding halt after I had to get back into the workforce. I don’t plan on making relaunching this blog an annual event but there were self-imposed “issues” that took time away from what was actually important – actually writing and telling stories.

I will admit that I spent far too much time being distracted by the look and feel of the site that it stymied putting up a post, almost equivalent to having a rock in your shoe. You could live with it but it annoyed you every single time you took a step. That was me with every post. I realize the analogy may not really work here but go with it.

After getting over many personal hurdles this past year (more on this to come!) and getting some serious headspace back, I knew I wanted to spend more time writing overall. Before I started banging away on my keyboard, I really wanted to make the site and adding content to it simpler and cleaner.

I Started With The URL

NicoAtienza.com (the old address) was fine as a URL but it didn’t roll off the tongue so well. Come on, you can be honest with me!

I came to this conclusion by imagining what would happen if I yelled it to someone across the street and the inevitable cries of ‘what?’ (Lil’ Jon style) and ‘can you say that again?’ that ensued. I wanted something easy but my first choice for a URL – heynico.com was not available a year ago which is why I settled on NicoAtienza.com.

It was around Christmas time when I started looking at domains again and to my surprise, heynico.com was available for a really low price so I grabbed without hesitating. Talk about a sign!

Next: A Facelift

I wish I had a screenshot of the first version of this site because it looked way cooler than what it is now. The trade-off I made with the first version was a bunch of some cosmetic things that bothered me but I chose to live with because of how cool the site looked in general. To make things worse, it caused extra work for me in order to overcome those cosmetic issues with every post I made.

Now that I nabbed a simpler URL, it also seemed apt to banish all the extra work I was doing and give the overall look of the site a makeover with an emphasis on simplicity. While I miss how cool the old site looked (a screenshot would have really helped here, Nico..), I didn’t make as many visual compromises with this version and the visual upkeep will hopefully be a lot less.

I want to focus on writing so keeping the visual elements as simple as possible was key.

Here’s To 2020

Thanks for getting this far.

Getting all of this written down (and off my chest) was meant more for my own sanity than your reading pleasure so I appreciate you reading along.

I am a horrific reader of books (really, this is 100% true) but I recently finished reading “Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done” by Jon Acuff, a book that served as the kick-in-the-ass that I needed to get back to writing on this blog.

This paragraph really stood out to me in particular:

Most of us spend most of our lives wondering what if. We imagine. We dream. We hope. And a week turns into a month turns into a year.

The stage stays empty. The mic stays quiet. The chair won’t spin around because no one is singing. In moments like this, the goal doesn’t disappear.

We think that perhaps the sands of time will cover it up and we will forget all about it, but we don’t. A goal unfulfilled may grow dim, but it never goes dark.

A movie character will remind us of the promise, a store window where a book like ours sits or an offhand comment from a friend will stir it all back up. Goals you refuse to chase don’t disappear—they become ghosts that haunt you.

At the end of the day, I just want to share stories on the internet but all I did for the past ~6 months was lock them up in my head for NO ONE to read.

That’s no bueno, so here’s to all the stories ahead.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
drinking-chai-tea-taj-president-hotel-mumbai-india

Nico Atienza

Chief Storyteller

An expat remote worker based in Colombo, Sri Lanka with a penchant for window seats on planes, travel, and technology that makes everyone’s lives easier.