all this again
I think almost no one who follows me on Tumblr has actually ever seen me post anything here, because I am a digital hermit. But it feels like something’s missing if I’m not keeping an online record (and Twitter, which I do use, is more of a conversation than a record), so I am trying again. I’m always trying and trying again (and if you’re going to read one thing I’ve ever written on the internet justifying writing on the internet to myself — and oh, there are many — make it the aforelinked one and not the one you’re currently reading, please).
When I think about how many sites I’ve started with various grand designs in mind and the gradual process of decay as I quit updating them, I always have the same really distinct mental image for the whole thing. I am standing in front of an enormous mirror with a little hammer, tapping on the mirror so it cracks in lots of places, making those little crackly spiderwebs of broken mirror over the whole reflection. I’ve tried to make neat distinctions between all the things I might like to write about (hoping for more of a vibrant kaleidoscope, I guess). The more I whack away at making them (here the mental image gets a nice shattering-glass soundtrack), the less clear everything gets. I am seeing myself in the cracks, in little pieces, but it’s not what I’m looking for; it’s nothing I can use. Eventually it’s not even anything any more.
And I keep having ideas and nowhere to put them, and I keep resisting Tumblr based on principle (the principle being that Tumblr is structured as a giant lowest-common-denominator popularity contest that favors image macros and hyperbole over anything thoughtful or personal or terribly interesting), but there isn’t a better container for a bunch of unrelated ideas. Time has also shown that my track record of web services I resist using tends actually to predict things I will eventually decide are great. Also Wordpress has started adding video ads to my old posts without any prior notification that they were doing so, which means I am probably never going back there and will eventually slash-and-burn the entire thing, because hell if I want my old sentimental blog posts associated in any way with some goddamned schlub’s stupid Youtubed face.
And so.