My Intent for This Blog

The Historical Record

Once upon a time I installed Movable Type and published my first blog.¹ To this day I do not know how many readers I had. I won’t say blogging was new, but it wasn’t yet mainstream. I was still figuring out what to write about, and tried to treat it as something of a public diary or journal (I may have even published my thoughts on the differences between the two). As time went on I found that I had developed a mental model where that first blog was for serious content, and I had lighter, less consequential things I wanted to say. So I made another blog, still using Movable Type, and started publishing in two locations.

Time passed. I took a crack at NaNoWriMo a few times, and at lest two of those times I started yet more blogs.² When I conclude my final dance with NaNoWriMo I have several blogs across many different hostnames and most of them, if not all of them, are stale. I took them offline.³

The decision to take them offline was not a sharp one; it was not clearly delineated or decided: it just happened. One day I was tired of hosting my own server, so I moved it into a VPS and decided that I no longer wanted to keep my blogs around where the public could read them. I wasn’t sure that what I had said in my twenties was at all representative of what I thought or believed at that time (nor at this present moment), and I did not (and still do not) want to take the effort to read everything I wrote to decide what I should continue to share, what I should revise, or what I should reference and publish an update. So the content left the Internet (as best as any content can).

I thought I not only closed the chapter on blogging, but that I had finished the book and placed it up on a shelf to gather dust. And yet, here I am, one more time, because I miss talking about things with (at?) an audience (or in this case the potential for an audience).

The Contemporary Chronicle

This is probably yet another purpose-built blog, and it too probably has a shelf-life, though I do not yet know it. I have an intention for this blog, one that I will try to honor, but it will sometimes not be honored, and sometimes it will be dishonored and disregarded; this is mostly because I lack even passable foresight; I will inevitably post something that, in the moment, I think is worth sharing, and in doing so I will fail to honor the intent behind this endeavor.

I intend this blog to circle around creativity, likely always around prose and storytelling, but there is a pull toward creating a cabinet of curiosities. At present I have three four distinct worlds in my head. One of them I am actively developing by working on a travelogue project.

Since I started thinking about restarting blogging I’ve been taking notes, mostly observations, about the creative process I am in. My plan is to read and review those notes roughly fortnightly with an eye to finding something worth sharing here.

I like rules and I like systems. I like compartmentalizing and organizing data, which is probably why I have had several blogs over the years rather that one monolithic one that houses everything. I do admire those people who can do that, but I feel most at home when I have neat, tidy, purposes. So, I’m going to offer myself a few rules:

1. There is no publishing schedule. A post is ready when it is ready. If I have nothing to say here, then I will say nothing.
   1. Take as long as I need. I may need to take several days to draft a post, and another day to edit, revise, and otherwise proofread a post. I may then take a day to let it rest before I publish it.
2. Build not destroy. I want this to be about positive movement forward; I want to be building and creating, not tearing down and destroying. It’s okay to get frustrated with the state of things. I think it’s fine to say “I can do better” and then do it. But I don’t want this to be a place where that sentiment shows up. I can have those feelings, but as I have learned over the decades: I do not need to share those thoughts.⁴
3. Observation over opinions. I want to spend more time talking about what I have observed in my processes, reading, watching, learning, and living. I do not want this to be something where I preach at people.

Over the past few years I have found content online that I was happy someone took the time to write, record, or film, because there was something in that piece of content that enriched my life or lessened my burden in the moment. To that end I’m hoping to do the same thing here. While I am working on a creative project I will publish what I discover, observe, and learn along the way.

Welcome to my [latest] blog. I hope you enjoy it.