A new home for my writing

For almost a decade I kept buying domains for the same blog. Every new job, every rebrand, every creative itch got its own URL. shameem.me when I was freelancing. shameem.dev when I started taking code seriously. wcwiz.com sitting in my dashboard for a WooCommerce site I never launched. Then shameem.blog, which at the time felt like the one that would finally stick.

None of them did.

The pattern was always the same. I’d register the domain, set up hosting, pick a theme I was sure I’d love, and write three or four posts in the first two weeks. Then life would shift. New job, new focus, new mood. The blog would go quiet. Six months later the itch to write would come back and, instead of opening the sleeping site, I’d buy something new. A clean slate felt easier than staring at the old one.

I don’t think the domains were the problem. I think I was.

When I joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer, something quiet changed in how I spent my days. My job was already full of writing. Forum replies, internal posts, tickets, docs. Not the writing I used to do for freelance gigs or affiliate posts. This was writing that helped someone actually solve a problem that had been eating their week. After a while I realized I missed the other kind of writing too. Not the marketing kind. The “hey, here’s what I figured out today” kind.

shameem.blog came out of that. A place to share what I do during the day without trying to rank for a keyword or push a product. The spirit was right. The domain was not, because the old pattern eventually caught up. I kept noticing I didn’t write there either. Same person, same habits, new URL.

So I tried something different. Instead of buying another clean slate, I moved everything I’ve ever written, from every old domain, into one place. My own name. shameemreza.com.

The reasoning is simple. My job can change. My focus will shift again. My interests move every few years and probably always will. The one thing that stays constant is me. A personal domain doesn’t need a tagline, and it doesn’t stop making sense when the work changes.

Around the same time I was doing all this, my family moved into a house I’d spent years building for them. Every decision in that house has a story behind it. Walking around it still doesn’t feel routine. I wanted the same thing for my writing. Not another project that might get abandoned in a year. A home that stays.

This blog is what I actually do, most weeks. WooCommerce debugging and WordPress work. Things I figured out inside a ticket. Habits that stuck. Tools I keep reaching for. The occasional note from life outside the terminal. The Automattic Creed is how I like to think about my work and my writing, even though this site has nothing to do with my employer. “Never stop learning. Help others. Value impact over money”. Those sit well with me.

There are no sponsors here. The domain is mine, the hosting is mine, the writing is mine. If a post saves you time or teaches you something new, a coffee goes a long way. If it doesn’t, that’s fine too.

Old URLs redirect here now. shameem.me, shameem.dev, shameem.blog. All of them land on this site. If you came from one of those domains and the page looks different than you remembered, the post is probably still here, just at a new address.

This is the last time I’m moving.