I just found out today that my blog’s theme was retired. I don’t know when WordPress retired it, but it gives me a familiar feeling about retirement. Sena gets the credit for giving me the idea of changing the theme (which is how my blog looks on the web) because of the new year. As I looked over the themes, I saw a tiny notice beside the name of my own. “Your blog theme has been retired. Consider getting a new one, you geezer!”
The notice didn’t really say that, of course, but that’s how I felt. I’ve been blogging since 2011. I’ve never had a theme that was retired. I realized that if I changed my theme now, I couldn’t go back to the old, familiar creaky, cob-webbed, old-fashioned theme I’ve had now with my second blog. This one has the theme (using the word in a different sense) of—retirement. In fact, come to think of it, the word “old-fashioned” was used in the WordPress article explaining why some themes get retired.
So, I started looking at the themes seriously today. Most of them had the word “minimalist” attached to them. Frequently, I read how great they were for my “business.”
Hey, I’m retired. I’m not in any kind of business. There seems to be a lack of emphasis on a theme for hobby bloggers, some of whom are retired geezers.
Anyway, I dropped my old-fashioned theme and put on a new one. While I was at it, I got rid of a lot of old widgets. WordPress calls them “Legacy Widgets.” I couldn’t find a clear explanation for why they call them that. I did find a definition on the web. Essentially, in this context, I think it denotes software that has been superseded but is difficult to replace because of its wide use. What’s wrong with sliders? I don’t mean little sandwiches. I mean the featured images with post titles that slide across the theme page, showing off my best posts—or at least what I think my best posts were. Really, no themes with sliders? That’s what minimalism leads to, I guess.
I’m a legacy consulting psychiatrist, meaning I’m retired—something else to feel ambivalent about. Anyway, I kind of like the new theme.
Go Retire Psychiatrist 