2022s

Oct 14, 2022 ∞

In my last post here, I was so worried about the precedent numbered entries in a series would set, I didn’t define the scope of the series itself well enough. Or if I did, I don’t remember.

Isn’t everything I write here a “process log”? This is a web log after all (since I am, for some reason, so set on using that particular antiquated phrase…)

So here I am! Making progress on my process and uh… logging it!

I’ve updated Homo Monstrosus, in both style and content. And the site has been on my mind more and more - as a tool, a project, a hobby, but also as a shelter, a record, a showcase. Creating and building in general has been on my mind more too, but the front, active part of it, rather than the back(burner), “sigh, one day…” part. I am almost building a creative practice. Or rather, I am building a creative practice, it’s just wobbly like a baby deer. Spooks easily like one too.

I am still iterating over exactly how I want to exist on the web. Still trying to crystalize and differentiate the ways one can publish web content. I’m not talking on a global, capitalism scale, or about being a Content Creator on a social media website or anything like that. I’m talking about one person, making (mostly) words and publishing them using the networked tools they have access to.

I’m thinking about the difference between pages that are designed to be dynamic and updated, versus static and time-locked. The blogging revolution brought web publishing to the masses, but it also came with this subconscious implication that the only valid content on the web was the newest, most current, whatever was at the top of the blog. And with that came the idea that “old” content was somehow less-than. Or that unchanging content, whether by design or as an artifact didn’t have a place on the web. Couldn’t be trusted. Or maybe those are just implications I wrestled with.

What do I want to make? Why? Who is it for? When is it for?

These are much more potent and healthy questions than the ones I’d traditionally ask like, Can I even make anything? Who do I think I am? Why haven’t I done more? Should I just stop kidding myself?

There’s other stuff on my mind. World stuff, obviously. But World-level internet stuff too. It seems very popular these last few months to acknowledge that the web and capitalism appear to be inexorably linked, and that the coupling is killing us, leading us and the planet herself to doom. And that’s not wrong, of course, but the situation was incredibly apparent well before Elon Musk said he wanted to buy Twitter (though that event, at least to me, seems to have kicked off the lastest wave of these kind of think pieces… and again, that’s not an inappropriate response.)

But as much as I generally agree with the sentiment - that’s not where I want to live right now. The internet hasn’t been what I’ve wanted it to be in a long time, well before I realized it. I can’t dismantle those systems.

I can chip away at my little site. Plod around this blog. Build my little chicken coop as the cathedrals fall to the shelling.

So that’s what I’m going to do.

Jul 11, 2022 ∞

Project Log 001

The work of my life, at the moment, appears to be centered around living and acting deliberately. I say “appears” because the more I try to do the Work of Life the more I realize I am discovering it rather than creating it. And like all white male explorers, “discovering” means “finding and realizing things that people who don’t look like me embraced and celebrated long, long ago.”

Jul 5, 2022 ∞

Log Start

It is, of course, a cardinal sin to blog about blogging, but it might be even more disrespectful of one’s time to use tools without thought and deliberate intention. And this place is a tool, among other things.

I cleaned out and pulled down the previous iteration of this blog. Didn’t throw anything away, never do. In fact, someday I’d really like to create one, consolidated (final?) repository of all of my online writing attempts from across the years and frameworks and services. (#TODO) A single archive could inadvertently make all of this look intentional. Despite how much time I obsess over places like this, I am often a long way from being deliberate with them.

In such an archive, you would also see just how much of my online writing chases its own tail, compelled to try and justify its existence. Trying and failing, because if you worry about that, you’ve missed the point. it’s too late.

And so, I will aim to avoid that here. There’s no need to over-complicate this. This is a web log after all, so I am going to try to bring the medium back to its roots: this is a log of what I am doing in and around the web. That’s a good place to start. Or, how about this? this is a log of my life, on the web. Even better. Ambiguity intentional.

this blog is part of a larger system I am building to catalog and engage with my life in creative and interesting ways. the desire to create, hone, and theoretically master these kinds of systems is maybe the great pursuit of my life.

this writing does not need to justify its own existence. But there is power in defining terms, in naming names, and stating intentions. I have learned that saying things out loud can make real. It activates them, in a way for me. it gives me permission to say and believe them myself.

Much of the work I’ve been doing lately is to settle on an internal vocabulary and grammar to guide my experiences. I am not surprised that work shows up here. But it is a process I don’t want to obsess over. I need language to help me move more freely, not to slow me down. I should hope to have a similar relationship with this blog.

one way to look at this blog is as a tool. another is as a medium. For me the two meanings can kind of blend together. a painting is the painter’s tool (to do what? #comeback) and their media. one can consider this blog from a similar place.

right now, my list of tools has been whittled down to what I hope are the essentials:

this blog: a public living document. a process log. a workshop. a testing ground. an open mic. a bulletin board.
my website: a library. a showcase. a temple. a garden. a workshop. and a graveyard. or it could be those things, one day. also: a white whale
notebooks: a variety of interconnected journals that are private, analog, but otherwise not that ideologically different than my digital projects - that is - they seek to interestingly and beautifully organize and communicate information

that last point is significant. Much of what I do is about trying to organize and express information in interesting and attractive ways. I also want to create engaging and impressive information. These two drives are related, but are not the same pull.

these are my current tools of expression. or modes. they are not the end results as much as the vehicles. And like many vehicles, they are as fun to tinker with as they are to pilot.

my goals are to use them efficiently and effectively, but also to enjoy them. one role of this blog is to catalog that journey, along with being an artifact of it, in itself.

This is the first step on a road I’ve been on many many times. This time, the log is running. May it be of use to someone.

Mar 10, 2022 ∞

Considering

Well, I’m 39 now. Have been for almost 30 hours. So far, so good (all things considered).

And boy oh boy, do I consider ALL the things.

In fact, it feels like I’ve done nothing for the last 2+ years but consider all the things. In my defense, there’s been a lot to consider. But, as is my custom, I’ve become fed up with considering and need to do… something. And this is about the place that I never get past. The precipice of Something. It’s always the same. Some arbitrary ‘new beginning’. Seizing the supposed energy that comes with a new week, a new month, a new pen, a new notebook, a new year. Because, ‘this time’ it will be different. However by ‘this time’ + two weeks it will be basically the same as it ever was.

Even this, the wry but frustrated observation of past cycles, the ‘first post in months’ that is destined to be come ‘the last update in weeks’, the soft ‘but maybe…’ whispering in the back of my head. The sad sigh that follows. I’ve done it all before.

And so, I am embarrassed. So often have I tried to jump start something that isn’t a car engine. So often have I postured, trying on the costume of the person I want to become, standing in front of the mirror going, “wouldn’t it just be wild if I just wore this?”

Wouldn’t it?

“This time will be different.”

Well, things are certainly… different. Pandemic. War. And the careening, bucking, lurching, drunken networked, polarized society we live in just throwing itself against the walls of its cage. I can honestly say that life at 39 is different than I expected. I don’t know that I ever actually sat down and considered what it would be like to be 39. But I do know I wouldn’t have ever considered it would be… like this.

So I guess that means it can be anything, that I can be anything.

It means I don’t actually have to come out here and pay my dues by bleeding all over the blogpost, by being just self-deprecating enough, by noting for the record how stupid or privileged or pointless this whole endeavor is, by winkingly insulting myself to wrestle the privilege away from anyone else.

It means that I can just… do what I want. Type what I want. Take pictures of what I want. Post what I want, build what I want. Perhaps more importantly, it means I don’t have to do… any of it. I can just be.

I am sick of death. Lately that is the dense, gaping black hole that lives in the back of my head and perpetually and eventually tugs at all of my thoughts. I can’t lose any more down that drain. I need to do… anything else.

And so, I am.