“All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again”

J.M. Barrie

I think it’s time to reboot my blog. Again.

I suppose you could argue it’s not really a “reboot,” since I’m not doing it on my “real” website. If we’re to strictly adhere to, you know, the parlance of our time, I suppose it’s technically more a “reimagining” or a “lega-sequel.” But fuck all that. I’m not interested in getting bogged down in some Ship of Theseus bullshit. Wherever it lives, whatever it’s called…it’s my blog, or at least the latest iteration (of many) it’s taken on through the years.

It’s been a long time since I last put any consistent, concerted effort into maintaining my own blog. For many years, I was more than happy to save myself the effort (and expense) and just post on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Within a few years, I’d largely stopped posting altogether. Though the term hadn’t been invented yet, the “enshittification” of those platforms was fully underway, making time spent there increasingly unpleasant. I was also really put off by the rise of influencer culture and the rapid, ugly deterioration of online commentary in general. Better, I decided, to become a conscientious objector in the Hot Take Wars and keep my remaining trickle of social posts gated to only the people I already knew.

So…what’s changed?

Full disclosure: I’m not sure I have a good answer to that question. The closest I can get is this snippet I found when I went back to reread Breakfast of Champions a few years ago. I grew up in Indiana, so Vonnegut was assigned reading in high school. Outside of Slaughterhouse-Five, I hadn’t circled back to him In a long while. But for whatever reason, I decided it was time…and came across this a preface to Breakfast he wrote in 1973.

This book is my fiftieth birthday present to myself. I feel as though I am crossing the spine of a roof — having ascended one slope.

I think I am trying to clear my head of all the junk in there — the assholes, the flags, the underpants…I think I’m trying to make my head as empty as it was when I was born onto this damaged planet fifty years ago.

Having recently crossed the age-fifty roof spine myself, that concept really resonated. The idea of decluttering my brain, finding a place to offload chunks of the accumulated detritus—and preventing (or at least mitigating) buildups of more recent junk. There’s genuine appeal for me in that.

At the same time, I have zero interest in doing more with my social feeds. Those platforms have only gotten uglier and more soulless (to better reflect their inventors or new owners, I guess). I also have the luxury of not needing to worry about audience and thus needing to “fish where the fish are.” I’m not in this to build my personal brand or amass a monetizable following. I truly just want a place to park the stuff that takes up a disproportionate amount of space in my brain. A nice, clean blog’ll do just fine…

How long will I keep this up? Honestly, that’s another question I can’t really answer. As alluded to in the headline, I’ve been guilty of a lot of start-and-stop over the years. Historically, I enjoy building blogs way more than I do maintaining them. Whether this is an Eccleston run or a Baker run is impossible to predict.  

I guess we’ll all find out together…