Tag: WordPress

Update on the new writing prompts

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

I kept an eye on the new writing prompts that we shipped last week. I was curious to see if people like them or not. Also, some of these are just a little bit unorthodox and may not be to the everyone’s liking.

So far:

Best writing prompt:

What’s a thing you were completely obsessed with as a kid?

Worst new writing prompt:

What’s the most interesting local custom you’ve encountered?

And the first unusual one is today’s prompt:

What are the biggest benefits of minimalist living?

I’ll have to post a true answer to this one but so far, the origins of it have only been hinted on my blog. Books create clutter. I have many. They take up living space. It’s kipple. As Philip K. Dick says:

Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself.

So my wife discovered Marie Kondo and thanks to her book, I was able to get rid of half of my clothes and a sizable portion of the books. But we are losing this battle.

Today’s writing prompt is invited by our family’s battle with books, clothes, fitness devices, and toys nobody plays with. Old Apple devices and their fancy boxes. Chargers. Cables.

Daily writing prompt
What are the biggest benefits of minimalist living?
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New Writing Prompts

~ Veselin ~ 9 Comments
Daily writing prompt
What’s a moment you wish you could freeze and live in forever?
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Faust broke his contract with Mephistopheles by asking time to stop. It’s a funny blogging prompt to appear today… so let me explain why it shows up, to the horror of everyone who expected the usual May 4th writing prompt and instead sees something new (OMG, it’s Star Wars Day).

I used to rely on writing prompts quite often because I’d run out of blogging ideas. After a 365-day blogging streak, they started repeating. Then, after 730 days, they repeated again. I wanted something fresh, so I began collecting prompt ideas in a spreadsheet, aiming to gather 730 fresh ones. I sourced them from good posts in the Reader, brainstormed with AI, the Sunshine Blogger Award, and picked some from the engagement threads on Reddit. I got to around 400–450, then started cleaning them up aggressively and eventually finalized a list of 366.

My colleague Tess then improved them by rewriting those that weren’t in proper English. She deleted the weakest ones. What’s left is this new batch of writing prompts.

They’re not perfect. I had some goofy and fun ones that didn’t make it to the final list out of concern some of you may find them inappropriate. So here we are.

We have a hackathon called “Radical Speed Month,” where we can ship cool changes without going through the usual approval process. I wish I could dedicate a few more days to this idea but I count my minutes because there are other areas that also need love and are at least as fun.

I hope you like the new prompts. If not, I take full responsibility.

PS. The results of the prompts API call is heavily cached and the new batch of prompts may appear to you within 24h.

If you could change one thing in WordPress.com, what would it be?

~ Veselin ~ 21 Comments

I’ll likely have the opportunity to fix or improve some unusual things next month, well outside my area of expertise. I’ve been thinking about making Writing Prompts and blogging streaks more interesting 🙂 and I’m looking for other ideas.

Is there one or more changes on WordPress.com you’d love to see? Open to suggestions.

Here’s a cat to grab your attention 🙂

WordCamp Sofia 2026

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

I joined the team for WordCamp Sofia for another year. This will be my third year in a row as part of the organizing team. The last two years were great, the teams were strong, and I hope we’ll have a good time together again.

Just a few photos from last year to add color to the announcement.

Two Years

~ Veselin ~ 26 Comments

I’ve been blogging every day for two years straight. I never imagined this blog would grow to become such an important part of my daily life. Thank you all for stopping by and supporting me by clicking the like button, posting comments, or just reading. It means a lot to me.

I just wish the celebratory notification said 2 years instead of 730 days.