Breathe

There’s a specific relief that comes from deleting a theme you’ve outgrown—not design fatigue exactly, but something physical, like finally putting down a bag that’s been digging into your shoulder for months. This journal looks different today. Simpler. Freer.

The old setup had a 400-pixel image ceiling that I’d been working around for so long I’d forgotten I was doing it. Every post was shaped by what could fit inside that box. Those tight little 150×104 thumbnails weren’t just ugly—they were a slow tax on thinking. Every image choice was already half-wrong before I made it.

The previous theme—Wonderwall, by Alvin Woon—was genuinely beautiful, and I don’t want to be ungrateful to it. But beautiful and right for me were two different things, and I stayed too long. The new one is called Simpla, built by ifelse, and my variation goes by "Breathe," which is exactly what I needed. Normally when I pick up a theme I tear it apart and rebuild from the inside—custom everything, layered modifications, the full intervention. This time I barely touched it. A few CSS tweaks, some icon swaps, a trim. It was almost perfect as delivered, which should have been humbling but mostly just felt lucky.

Writing here should feel like a fresh document, not a continuation of something that stopped working. Let’s see if it holds.