Hi there!
This is the space of Tanja de Bie – van Leeuwen. Yes, it is a mouthful; let’s just say that when I married, I promised to be faithful and always use my full name.
In short:
Happy human being. Wife. Mom. Daughter. Friend. Cyclist. Designer. Writer. INFJ-A. Gen X. That’s it. Now you know me.
A mini timeline:
- March 2nd, 2001 registered daags.nl – used HTML for weekly blog posts “Site Of the Week”
- October 14th, 2006 and published my first WordPress post on tanjadebie.nl
- March 5th, 2007, my first bikeblog post was published, First as “Sundayjen”, and shortly after it was renamed to bikeblog.nl
- A waterfall of cycling related side-projects
- Girlzzoffroad.com
- Freeride4girls.nl
- Gravelgirls.nl
- Enduro-mtb.nl
- Then I got busy with the notion of becoming more scalable
- ihavesomanyideas.com (posts taken offline to repurpose here)
- betterjournaling.com (under review, perhaps I’ll release a new version of the planner)
- unstoppablegear.com (taken down)
- daags.nl (service for freelancers I pauzed)
NOISE
The notion of becoming more scalable, selling knowledge as a product or service, became a distraction and led to a collapse in 2018 when all the fun was sucked out of it. It became all about the ROI, doing things that lead to the desired outcome (monetization), and it wasn’t about being curious anymore.
I had to publish, or I lost momentum in people’s timelines. I had to stay relevant, or I would lose momentum. It became work. And not work I particularly loved to do. And what I used to love to do, writing and sharing on the internet, I now despised.
I couldn’t keep adding to the noise anymore. It goes against my personal principle and made me physically ill for going against my core for so long.
The pandemic (20220) made my aversion even worse. The noise of everyone pushing to be heard and seen was overwhelming, and I retreated even further. That was actually a very good thing. I found my way back to things I loved in the first place, apart from my family, of course.
I read books. I learned to sew. And I started writing again (on paper). Thinking, going outside and cycling. My rides became longer and more adventurous. I became ‘me’ again.
Heart
The time to think gave me the insight I wanted to build more stuff from the heart and not only use the screen. I wanted more time offline, using my hands and tools. It gave me great peace and pleasure. Slowly my desire to build online stuff for fun and personal gain (not monetary gain) crept back into my life, and I started a secret project. But it wasn’t enough; I realized how I used to love to write and share. I made a mindmap of all my websites and domain names to determine what to keep, clean, delete or restart.
And to be honest, I also just wanted to start anew. Toss some of the infantile articles I wrote in the past. Polish the gems to repurpose here, and for the rest, just start from scratch. Why not. Because this revamps my love for publishing on the web, which makes it all worth it.
That is what this blog is and will always be: me writing about stuff that makes me stop and wonder – or smile. But every word, every article here I write, I will love. Or it won’t be published.
There.
Made with love ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜
Tanja
PS. Thanks for reading. You are amazing. You know that, right?!
PPS. Read the privacy policy for privacy concerns of this mini website.
Acknowledgements
I love the .blog extension, but I didn’t want to fork the extra 700 dollars to get the tanja.blog so it became tanjas.blog, an idea I got from seths.blog Thank you, Seth.
The marker-style highlight code I found on max.hn Thank you, Max.