Funny Thing Is...

My cat Velma. She is judging my return.

Jiggity-jig

I made a whole thread on BlueSky about using Blogger to write online, and now I feel weird about it. That's okay; I'm used to making declarations and not giving myself an out in case I lose resolve or change my mind. It's called living with ADHD and having no clue what was getting in my way for about 34 years.

My thoughts in that thread came from a genuine place: I missed this simplicity and the community that often developed around blogs. Weirdly, for me, that community has lasted. I've got friends on Facebook and other social sites whom I first learned when they commented on my crime blogs. That is amazing because so much on the internet is so ephemeral.

The domains surrounding a blog like this—Blogger, Blogspot—seem eternal, but I'd bet up to 75-80 percent of the blogs you'd encounter just trawling through them have been dead for quite some time. Others have been repurposed for spam or phishing. Admittedly, this isn't an ideal platform unless Google decides to really reinvest in it one day.

Anyway, the lure of "microblogging" really started the whole thing. Why spend time churning up links to add or fiddling with a photo you could post without incurring some kind of copyright takedown when the equivalent of a blurb might get your point across? And thus the blog exodus began. It is silly when you consider it all boiled down to—at one time—what kind of online editor you wanted to use to get your thoughts out there. 

With the mass shift and adoption of microblogging, an insane amount of context and nuance was lost. Yet we rolled with it. I still like social media in many respects, but the good it has done for me in the past (e.g., gotten me jobs, and generated positive and negative viral attention) has begun to give way to the bad.

So—back to blogging.

Delays, Delays

I started this post on Feb. 21, 2025, and picked it back up today, March 7th. I don't recall my overall intent when I began on the 21st, and that's fine. I'll pick up where I am now: It is a bright, beautiful day, but very windy. The wind sweeps debris across my neighborhood, ghosts of waste hanging in winter-stripped trees and pushing into the dried and decaying piles of leaves still hanging in fences from the autumn windstorms.

It's that weird time in a New England winter when our brains insist it's almost spring, but the weather disagrees daily with knifing cold north winds and gravel-like spits of snow. (Some call it soft hail, but the Germans call it Graupel.) 

As of today, I have lost twenty pounds since the doctor's appointment that had my extremely chill Millennial GP inform me in his gentle way that the chances of me dying from a heart attack or stroke within the next few years had skyrocketed since about 2020 or so. Not long COVID (though I suspected that more than once), just me getting old and inheriting an overdriven cardiovascular system and type A+ personality from my father's side of the family. 

I've lost about 40 pounds since the appointment before that, when my blood pressure was through the roof, even though I felt fine at the time. I can wear clothes I haven't been able to wear comfortably in ten years or more. 

This is an old cyclical story in my life, but I intend to end this time with whatever bottom weight I arrive at. I've struggled all my life with weight and am tired of my cycle of letting go of that diet and fitness thread and having to struggle to pick it up again a year or two after realizing I've gone to pot. 

Focus

My cat Daphne napping peacefully as
I ramble

I'm close to 60, so it's not about appearance this time, though if I look better, I'll take it. It's just about living. My parents died six months apart in 2023. On the positive side, they both lived much longer than most of their peers, and my mother's health was fragile when she was in her 40s, so reaching 85 as she did was something of a miracle. Mom and Dad maintained their faculties, too. On the negative side, my two oldest siblings died in 2000 and 2016 respectively (I have one sister left, she has profound disabilities and lives in a group home in Tennessee) so I was the one who had to handle everything.

I can admit something uncomfortable about that now. Nothing will make you confront the fact you're an overgrown, slightly bratty boy like having to manage your late parents' estate and make sure your disabled sister is adequately taken care of. Losing my parents forced me to seriously commit to adulting. I wish I could say becoming a father for the first time in 1995 did that, but...alas. 

As we enter early 2025, I've just started to surface from the depths of grief. This shift means living more. It means I will write more here and elsewhere. It means I will recognize my blessings, which are many. It means I will take better care of myself for my and my family's sake. 

Sometimes, I feel like I've only just begun to emerge from a long, chaotic fugue—a massively disorganized and painful set of circumstances that were often wholly self-inflicted. This doesn't mean I'm all better or even new and improved, but it does mean I know who I am and what I want to do with my life. And I'm doing it.

Hey Man, You Serious About This?

(This post began life as a thread on BlueSky.)

I've been writing online for over 20 years, and over time, I've grown increasingly frustrated with the ever-complicating nature of expressing oneself on modern platforms. For me, it’s not about selling a book or building an audience through intricate SEO strategies—it's about the pure joy of writing. There was a time when I felt the excitement of realizing that people were reading my work, but that feeling has long since faded. Now, I simply want to open up a WYSIWYG editor and write without worrying about stuffing posts with the right keywords for search engines to notice.

The pressure to conform to platforms that demand elaborate self-promotion has been inimical to the act of writing itself. The necessity to market oneself, especially when writing for money, detracts from the creative process. Sure, selling a book or earning income from writing requires engaging in a lot of non-writing work beforehand, but that’s something I can accept when I need to. However, for my own online writing, I want nothing to do with that.

Recently, I decided to return to what is now an antique content management system (CMS). This choice represents a deliberate opt-out from the modern digital noise and the constant tug-of-war with platforms like Substack, Ghost, and Beehiiv. While I recognize that platforms like WordPress offer many tools that might simplify blogging even further, I have grown weary of the relentless switch from one platform to another and the associated frustrations.

Moreover, I find Substack’s interpretation of “free speech”—which seems to mean spotlighting fascists and those sympathetic to extremist views—unacceptable. Valid alternative points of view shouldn’t come at the cost of giving undue attention to abhorrent ideologies. 

So, I'm simplifying my approach. I’m keeping my Substack account open just long enough to download my posts and subscriber information, with plans to eventually transition to another platform—likely Ghost. However, I’m not set on it 100%. 

In the meantime, I’m returning to the simplicity of blogging as it was in 2005, taking a step back from the non-stop demands of modern digital publishing. In doing so, I hope to recapture that original joy of writing, free from the burden of endless SEO tweaks and platform switching. 

Once Again, I…

 …come not to mourn Blogger, but hype it. Or cry over it. I don’t know. Who knows anymore? 

Such a simple platform, easily visible to those in the know. So easy to use. And yet somehow emblematic of an earlier age. I’m a semi-educated hick transcribing telegrams to rush across town to Mr. So & So the big wig or something.

But once upon a time, Blogger was a kind of home to so many. Now it’s like Google’s own Ozymandias or some shit. If you’re mighty, just go ahead and start despairing. Is what I’m saying. 

Anyway. I might start using this as a daily public scratchpad and not even worry if anyone sees it. I may not write again for another (almost) three years. Miracles happen every day. Yo.

I was only kind of kidding...

 ...About using Blogger again. I mean, it's not hard to learn and the end product looks just fine. WHY NOT?

Here I go, here I go again...

 Ironically blogging again on my Blogspot address. 

Hello. It is 8:16 am ET on January 21 in the year of our Lord 2022. The news today is bad. The news is bad every day. It has been bad for two years now. 

Meat Loaf died. He was 74. Mr. Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday) collaborated with Jim Steinman to bring young Boomers and Gen Xers an operatic vision of doing it in the car. 

He also showed us rock stars didn't need to look a certain way. They could sound like tenors meant for Wagnerian godhood but look like a guy from Texas named Marvin and the world would not wobble from orbit and perish in the embrace of the Sun.

The Russians might invade Ukraine. They might not. But they probably will. 

It is very cold where I live. 

A billionaire with personal issues wants to tap into our actual brains. 

Elon Musk's Neuralink fascinates me. I wish it didn't, because overall the whole device "implanted flush with skull & charges wirelessly, so you look and feel totally normal" thing he's proposing is as dystopian as awaiting trial for an unknown crime while dressed in a cockroach suit and being guarded by sentient, fascist barnyard animals. At the same time, it points toward something that will happen. The question I have is just how comprehensive such an implant might be. Could someone upload from their mind as well as receiving input? There are things I'd like to get rid of. And if human consciousness could be located in a specific way in the brain, could we simply upload that once our bodies give out? Maybe grow a new self (clone) and download into that? Scary and intriguing. Mostly scary. 

Here ends another random ironic Blogspot entry. I will return later. In a day or six months, not sure. 

I’ve gone feral

 …Facebook is down. Instagram is down. The world is spinning out of control, a belts snapping, cogs and flywheels flying. 

So I went running back to Blogger. Let’s make it 2004 again. No Facebook then. No Twitter. No Instagram. Just uglyass blogs and MySpace and shit. 

I wonder, sometimes

...why blogger is still here. It works, yes. Plenty of people still use it. I'm still oddly proud I managed to get this blog name.

At the same time, Google rarely seems to do much with it and a lot of blogs still look 15 years old. Even if they are regularly updated.

Seems like there should be a better use for the site.

Anyway, here is wherel plan to do a lot of stuff, though I will ontinue figuring out a use for this space.

 https://huff.substack.com.

Now I'm 51

The old cliche about life coming at you fast is too damn true. Pretty sure I was 18 just yesterday, driving a 1980 Buick Regal around Nashville, the car packed with friends.

I'm not sad or down about being 51, just kind of amazed. I've outlived two siblings and some cousins, not to mention classmates from high school and college. I couldn't have predicted who or how many on that score.

I did predict some of where my life would go; I knew years ago. But it's mostly been good and bad surprises.

I have another 30-40 years to go, Lord willin'. I don't know much of what will happen but it will, at minimum, be interesting.

Stoicism

This seems silly as hell on some level but I've been reading up on the philosophy of stoicism.

Stoicism isn't what most people think--it's not about merely enduring adversity with stony resolve. On a practical level it's about understanding what we can and cannot control and adjusting accordingly. There's this lovely practicality to it that soothes my anxiety-ridden nature.

Seeking to understand a new philosophy at 50 is the part that feels so silly, I guess. Yet there is a simplicity about stoicism that doesn't task my supposedly aging brain. And it isn't about enduring hardship but about  finding contentment in the middle of the storms life sends your way.

I need that sort of input. It's pretty fucking cool.

I hate being happy

Hands up if you're the kind of person who tends to actively sabotage your own happiness. That's me. It's not intentional at all--though who would intentionally sabotage themselves?

I do this to forestall everything that can go wrong. You know, if you anticipate disaster then you aren't surprised when it happens.

At the same time it ends up something like a request for bad results. A self-fulfilling prophecy.

I turn 51 in November. Maybe this is the year I fix this shit. Maybe.