Enough is Enough

I’m tired of bleeding money every month. Adobe Creative Cloud. Netflix (and Disney+, and HBO Max…). Skylum Luminar. WordPress.com. The list goes on. Death by a thousand subscriptions.

What started as a convenient $10/month here and $15/month there has snowballed into hundreds of dollars vanishing from my account every month. For what? Software I don’t fully own. Services I barely use. The constant nagging feeling that I’m being nickel-and-dimed into oblivion.

So I’m done. This migration from WordPress.com to Hugo is my first step in a broader mission: take back control of my digital life.

Why WordPress Had to Go

Don’t get me wrong, WordPress.com is a perfectly fine platform. But that’s exactly the problem: it’s fine. Fine enough that you don’t think about the $25/month (or more) you’re paying for basic features. Fine enough that you accept the limitations because “it’s easier than self-hosting.”

But here’s what I realized: I was paying for convenience I didn’t need, and sacrificing control in the process. My content was locked into their platform. I couldn’t customize things the way I wanted. And every year, the price seemed to creep up just a little bit more.

Enter Hugo: Simple, Fast, and Free

Hugo is a static site generator. Instead of a complex database and server-side rendering, it takes my Markdown files and spits out plain HTML. No subscription. No backend to maintain. No security vulnerabilities to patch every week.

Here’s what I love about it:

  • I own everything: My content is just Markdown files in a Git repository
  • Lightning fast: Static sites are ridiculously quick
  • Free hosting: Cloudflare Pages, Netlify, GitHub Pages, take your pick
  • Version control: Everything’s in Git, so I have complete history
  • Write in Markdown: No more fighting with WordPress’s block editor

The migration took me an afternoon. Export my WordPress content, convert to Markdown, set up Hugo, push to GitHub, and boom—done. No more monthly bill.

The Bigger Picture

This isn’t just about WordPress. It’s about a fundamental shift in how I think about software and services.

Subscriptions I’m evaluating next:

  • Adobe Creative Cloud → GIMP, RawTherapee, RapidRaw
  • Netflix & other video streaming services → Maybe keep one rotating subscription?
  • Various SaaS tools → Looking for open-source alternatives

I’m not against paying for software. I want to support developers. But I want to pay once for something I own, not rent it forever. I want software that respects me as a user, not a recurring revenue stream.

The Road Ahead

Will this be more work? Probably. Hugo requires a bit more technical know-how than WordPress.com. GIMP/RawTherapee/RadpidRaw has a steeper learning curve and not as much features as Adobes software. But you know what? I’m okay with that.

Because every subscription I cancel is money saved. Every self-hosted solution is one less company with control over my data. Every open-source tool I learn is a skill I actually own.

I’m trading convenience for freedom. And honestly? It feels pretty good.

This is the first post on my new Hugo blog. No subscriptions. No platforms. Just me, my content, and a simple static site. Here to take back control.