Well time to pack up and leave WordPress.com
The tools provided for plain text writers are now so buried and hard to use that it takes me 5 minutes to get the layout correct and the formatting in place.
This is a visual media world and platform. Written text has no value to the organization called “Word” press. The greater focus being on the Press and the pressure to conform to the view of a commercial platform.
I do understand how the block version of WordPress is supposed to work – and if you create media rich posts it does work a lot better.
But for words – just plain words this is now good awful painful.
Step one is moving my domain
Step two is canceling my auto-renew
Step three is waiting for the clock to wind down and the self-host elsewhere.
Since my auto-renewal happened before the switch to full gutenberg – I am stuck here for one more year. Well I won’t wait the full year – but I might as well get some use out of the shipwreck that I paid to use.
merlinspielen 
I will hate to see you move, Merlin. I love your haiku. I find that I am unable to navigate the WordPress new functions since I am slow with technology. Hmmm. 🙂
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Thank you. And yes the new features are clunky. Heck I am a computer guy. I work with technology everyday. If I am frustrated – how much more so for folks that don’t have my background.
I won’t be far and will try to find a way to redirect to my new home on the web.
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I had a similar experience with WP. If you move now, you can point the old WP site toward the new site and retain followers. I’ve followed you for about eight years now and I’d hate to lose track.
I’ve moved to WIX, which isn’t all together great, either, but I do find it a bit more user friendly. I’d miss your poetry and vignettes if you were to leave all together. Wishing you the very best of success with this move.
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Thank you for the kindness of your words! That means so very much more than you imagine. At times I feel like my site is invisible. Nice to know it has been seen!
And yes indeed that is my slow plan – to migrate elsewhere. Which is why I am moving the domain name first to retain the name.
And it isn’t that WordPress isn’t a good platform for media rich sites – I am just a simple man with simple needs.
I write as if this is a typewriter – because that is how I began writing. The process is part of what gets me into my writers headspace 🙂
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