Welcome to the reboot of the reboot of the blog. I’ve come and gone so many times that it doesn’t matter anymore anyway. No one’s reading this, but I’m writing it and I care more about that than you reading it. But thank you for reading! Please don’t leave.

I’ve been writing online in some way or another for over 20 years, over various platforms and media. Message boards, GeoCities, Open Diary, LiveJournal, WordPress, Blogger, I even had a very short-lived hosting/domain situation in 2006 that cost me $10 for one year (I didn’t renew it in 2007, and I will never remember what it was ever again). I’ve learned a few certainties about myself in that time period: a) Writing is one of the few activities on this planet that I truly enjoy, b) When I’m not writing I’m unhappy whether I’m able to realize it in the moment or not, c) I fucking hate modern social media.

Some day I’m sure I’ll expound upon and bitch about c) in excruciating detail, but for now my focus is on my revitalized drive to write again. I had that shitty-looking and overly-neglected blog on Blogger/Blogspot for almost 10 years and nothing about it got me truly excited to put any effort into it. I was tired of feeling like I was visiting some abandoned, cluttered warehouse just to add more to the clutter. It was hindering my own desire to think. It was time for a goddamned change.

I’ve always wanted my own domain name, even 20 years ago. I bit the bullet and bought one a week ago. I figured, if nothing else, sinking some money into this hobby might be a helpful push in the right direction. I hauled my blog over to WordPress and I’m already very pleased with the layout of this thing. This no-frills format is almost exactly how I want it to look. I have a ton of work to do still, remapping links and adjusting some HTML and cleaning up a lot of these bullshit backslashes that were added everywhere during importing. It’s worth it though. I’m already more excited about writing than I’ve been in a very long time. I have a million ideas, most of them revolving around my extremely introverted interests, and I’m looking forward to bringing it all into fruition and tapping back into that natural momentum that’s been largely missing since starting a career and having kids.

Longform blogging as an artform is dwindling, and that makes me sad. I don’t care about selling my brand (whatever the fuck that is), or search engine optimization with keywords and artless content, or carving a niche out, or specializing and focusing my content. I’m not looking to make money, or get famous, or even really have followers. If it happens, great, but 99% of this is for my mental health. I want to do this just to do it, I want to create what I want to create for myself and no one else, because doing it makes me happy. And, contrary to what you may have learned about me, I care about my own happiness! It took me a while to figure that out, but here we are. Join me if you want to, but I don’t care if you do, and that alone should make you happy for me anyway. Thanks for reading, and if you are interested in keeping up with my work and subscribing please feel free to do so on the sidebar. No pressure.