I just finished reading a blog post entitled The Forever Project by Scott Turner of Here Dragons Abound. It made me reflect on Iron Arachne and what I'm trying to do with it.
Lately I've been taking a break from Iron Arachne, and while on that break, I've found that I lack motivation or interest in continuing it. But this blog post made me reconsider that. It's not that I lack motivation or interest in Iron Arachne, but rather that I've been too focused on developing the site as a tool for others to use and not near enough on what I originally started it for.
Iron Arachne is my "forever project," as the article calls it. It's an endless creative exploration meant to delve into many, many different topics at the drop of a hat. It's not meant to be complete, or bug-free, or even useful. I had forgotten that.
In the context of this revelation, I'm taking a look at what Iron Arachne is currently and where I'd like to take it. I definitely don't want to do another rewrite. However, I think I would like to start exploring more random concepts. To that end, I'm going to follow some of the advice from Scott and write a bunch of new issues in GitLab that are just ideas of things to try - small ones, medium ones, big ones, and pie-in-the-sky ones.
I also will need to reinstate my weekly ritual of coding on Sunday mornings, but I think I'll broaden the scope of that a bit to be "work on Iron Arachne" instead of coding. That means anything that falls within that context is fair game - so, I could code, or I could do artwork, or read about geology, or write issues, or write a blog post, or anything else that fits the mold.
Now that I'm getting this down in writing, I'm finally getting excited about Iron Arachne again. That's a tremendous sign that I'm on the right track.