meta
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this blog: a public living document. a process log. a workshop. a testing ground. an open mic. a bulletin board.
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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
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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
Blogs All The Way Down! Blogs Forever and Forever 100 Years!
I’m not on Tumblr much anymore. Both for Tumblr/social media-y reasons, and for personal ones, but all of them in some way intersect with the concepts of how I spend my time, and how to be more deliberate in doing so.
I’ve been really into the idea of the Indie Web lately, which is a “movement” but also, more broadly, seems to be a lot of people asking the same sort of questions I’ve had for a long time: What is it like to be an average person who wants to express themselves on the internet in This Modern Age? How can people utilize the social, artistic, and documentary strengths of this sort of technology while avoiding everything else that is gross, shallow, and commodifying about the modern web?
Migrating over to micro blog and realizing it has solved every major and minor annoyance I was experiencing on my old platform/stack…
#currently
Soft Reboot
Offline, I wrote:
I’ve been spending some time, literally tonight and in general, bopping around the current, uh blogosphere. I’ve found a few sites, I believe from ooh directory that are doing basically the exact thing I could see myself doing which is… this, right now. Except in a blog instead of privately, talking to myself in Notion.
Why not do this in a blog? Why I am here? Because I don’t think anyone will read it? I just read a bunch of random blogs. So its clearly not that hard to get it in front of some eyes.
Because I don’t want to invest the effort? That’s very possible, but that’s also the kind of energy I’m trying to transform.
Because…it will suck? Well probably but that’s a bad reason not to do something.
And so, I’m here. Again. For the first time. Again.
I don’t need to know how this will all go in order to do it at all. I need to keep telling myself that.
Something I read tonight, from this new personal blog I discovered discussing their love of ‘daily bloggers’:
I also like it when they don’t have all the answers, as prescriptive blogs aren’t my jam. The more they write without an overactive filter, the better. It allows me to learn/discover things alongside them.
That’s… facinating. Because, trying to actually answer my above question of “Why am I not just blogging?”, I realize a large part of my hesitation to engage with blogging specifically (as opposed developing and writing more polished “essay” posts (which I don’t do much either but for different (bad) reasons…)) is because I devalue what I write when I “write without an overactive filter”. I doesn’t feel “real” and I can’t imagine anyone would want to read it. I literally don’t see the value in it for anyone outside of myself.
…and then I think of all the time I’ve spent reading other people’s personal blogs and zines, and things like published diaries, notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
So yeah. I think I just need to get out of my own way and type stuff on the damn internet. And go from there.
Thanks, Veronique.ink!
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:
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.