It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a writer in possession of too much time, must be in want of a blog.
I’ve been spending a good amount of time over the past few months figuring out how to build this website, and it’s now basically good to go! (Excuse the bugs that will continue to linger.) This is a website that does everything I need a website to do and looks more or less like I want a website to look. And the keystone to this website, as I’ve imagined it, would always be a blog. And here it is—with some messy posts that I made while figuring out the backend of the blog and all. (I’ll probably delete those at some point—or maybe not!)
Why a blog? So retro, I know. And relatedly, why one that I coded myself? Not to sound too techno-libertarian about it, but I wanted to own the means by which I post. What with the recent hoopla around Substack hosting (and profiting from) lots of Nazis, to Substack refusing to remove its plenitude of Nazis, to Substack deciding eventually that it would indeed remove some of the Nazis who use that platform, I decided that it was better to more or less have things in my own hands. This is indeed because I don’t want to have my blogging platform wrapped up with a bunch of Nazis but also admittedly because, beyond the Nazis of it all, dealing with other platforms (such as but certainly not limited to Substack) has proven to be quite a headache over the past year! When the alternative seems to be writing the word “Nazis” as many time as I have done in the past paragraph, there is nothing wrong with some text posts and an rss feed!
Okay, so what am I going to do on this blog? This is largely an exercise in stretching the writerly muscles, of getting words onto screen often and for pleasure rather than pay or professional obligation. I’ll be writing a bit about books, a bit about what I’ve been watching, a bit about what I’m thinking about. General musings, with minimal branding. I hope you’ll read this; I hope I’ll keep writing it! (One never knows with new endeavors, especially as the former affects the latter.)
Feel free to write me if you have any thoughts about anything I’ve posted here—I would love to hear from you.