I am a longtime WordPress user. My own blog is one of the freebies because I have never taken the time to learn how to customize my own site. But, I work for a woman who is brilliant when it comes to coding and design. I must confess to being a bit spoiled by the WordPress site she has created. That is probably the other reason I’ve never taken the plunge and designed my own site – it could never measure up to hers!
A few months ago, though, I noticed something. WordPress kept trying to get me to change to the “new editor.” It was promoted as easier. Simpler. Sleeker. Better.
The simpler was definitely true. In place of the familiar dashboard that took a bit of learning to manage, every detail of the new editor was practically self-explanatory. But, many of the things I’d previously taken care of on my own were done for me automatically – and not always the way I wanted them to be done. Instead of choosing to utilize them, they were chosen on my behalf. Easier? Yes. Better? I wasn’t so sure.
It’s possible I wasn’t really losing anything with the new editor, but I ended up deciding to go back to the old one. I knew where everything was, and I didn’t have to undo things that were automatically taken care of for me. The old design much more closely matched what I work with day in and day out through my job, so it was more natural to just continue with that layout. After a while, WordPress stopped asking me to change, and I fell back into a nice rhythm again.
Now, some of you might be reading along thinking, “She’s just resistant to change. She needs to be willing to accept new things.” And, that is true. I have experienced a lot of change in my life over the years, and sometimes I get tired of it. I just want to stay the same for a while, and I have to be reminded that growth and change often goes hand in hand.
But not all change is helpful, and that includes change that automatically makes life simpler for us. Much of our society is moving that direction: toward the simple. Toward having work done for us. Toward a reality where we don’t have to figure things out because it’s all taken care of.
I’m not sure that’s always a good thing. Easier is not always better. Simpler is not always the most helpful. Sometimes it just makes us lazier, less attentive, and less able to think and problem-solve for ourselves. Then when problems arise that our easy, simply, do-it-for-us lifestyle can’t quite handle, we suddenly find that we have forgotten how to problem solve. How to really think.
In many ways, yes, simple is better. But in other ways, it may be robbing us of the best.
Not Quite Ordinary 