Welcome to my website!

So here’s the thing. I am highly aware of the series of failed attempts at establishing an online writing presence. Those of you who have followed along, my loyal readers, know the story: I get psyched, choose a venue, start writing, try to do waaaay too much, cannot sustain it and end up vanishing once again. Sigh. But I really do love to write, have opinions to burn and think it is probably good for both my intellectual acuity and mental health to flex my English major muscles. So I keep trying and this is the latest in a long line.

Side note: in my defense, while I thought substack was going okay it rapidly became enshittified like everything else on the internet and I came to really not like going there. It should be noted that while it felt to me like it happened very fast the truth is probably that I was late to the party – I am a notorious old dog, as in not good at new tricks – and it was in decline long before I got there. Either way what made it great was rapidly overcome by the usual crap so I fled.

While this will in fact take the form of a blog in many ways, it will also be an attempt to bring together the things I like about various platforms – I have come to despise the term “social media” for what it represents and how increasingly inapt a description of what it is – while dodging the things I cannot abide. For example, I like substack’s long form capabilities but don’t like its growing percentage of algorithm driven drivel. I like the idea of sharing things on instagram or twitter (I can’t bring myself to call it X) but cannot abide the overabundance of misinformation, trolls and, again, algorithms. As for facebook, well, while I truly believe it was once wonderful I now feel it should be destroyed, literally, and do not strive to emulate or simulate any part of it. This desire dovetailed nicely with, and was probably even driven by, my growing discontent with Big Tech and the bastards that run it so when I looked for options to both scratch my various itches and flip the bird to the technogarchs (like they care) I found my own website to be the only solution. I have not gone so far as to get into web hosting – I may yet! – but this little corner of the web has already grown wildly out of control and shows no signs of slowing. It has been at times amazing, frustrating, rewarding and just plain fun and if nothing else it has been a kick to dabble in something new and learn a few things. Maybe not so old dog after all.

I accept wholeheartedly how self-indulgent this all is. Who am I and why does anyone care? I don’t know the answer to either of those questions but am working on the first and coming to terms with the second. In an amazing conversation with my future son-in-law, I was given the germs of a clearer understanding about the creation of art and who it serves. Namely, that if you are doing it for the audience there is a good chance that it will be inauthentic and not satisfy them or you. If you do it for yourself in a genuine way you at least have a chance of self-fulfillment, and if it speaks to or entertains or in any way reaches any audience at all, then right on. (Sorry if I got any of that wrong, Carl, I’m trying.) And while building a website and writing a blog is probably not art in the conventional sense – whatever the hell that means – it is creation. And one of my favorite things I am learning from Burning Man is that creating, in any form, whether it be making, building, expressing, growing, learning or whatever, is the stuff that feeds our souls. And we can all stand to do more of that, not only for ourselves but because it is our best chance to save us, all of us, from the spiral of division, decay and destruction on which we have set our society.

Wow, that one got away from me! In any event, I’m glad you’re here and hope you might enjoy poking around what I hope will be an eclectic collection of, um, who knows what. I will leave you to explore what is very much a work in progress. I am hoping to keep it growing and changing and there are already some ideas swirling (a social page is one, no algorithms or moderators, just those of us who want to share and interact) for future improvements. There will be abundant opportunities to comment so feel free. I may be doing it for me, but that doesn’t mean I want it to exist in a vacuum. Thanks for coming – have fun!