Mission statement

I had a blog for a long time. Then I ignored it for a while. Then it went away. Now it’s back, again.

I hated looking at my old site. It was in dire need of revamping, like that closet in your house you need to clean out, but every time you walk past it, the job just seems too big. And part of you is afraid if you open it up, shit will just topple out of it and crush you.

And then — just like that — it was gone. My webhost sent an e-mail saying I should pay them for another two years of hosting, and I had a good long think about whether I ought to. And then I didn’t.

But I’ve decided I need a blog. I need it for different reasons than I needed one in 2009, and that’s fine. The world is different. I’m different. People don’t read blogs anymore, but I still need to write them. And, in thinking about what I need and why, I’ve decided these three things are true, and will form the backbone of what this blog becomes, going forward.

This blog is a destination.

We, as denizens of the Internet, have ceded our personal online spaces to the Town Square. The Internet is no longer a series of places we go to, one at a time, to meet people on their own ground. Instead, it’s a bunch of loosely-interconnected Town Squares, where we all hang out together, trying to be heard over the din.

But you can’t think in the Town Square; it’s too loud. And you can’t get your bearings in the Town Square; it’s too busy. And also, the people in charge of running the Town Squares do not have our best interests at heart.

So, I’m staking my claim here. This is where my thoughts and words are organized. This is where people can find me, if they need to. I’ll still be elsewhere, of course. The Town Square has enormous value. But I won’t try to live there anymore. I want to be a person, again, and not just a part of the conversation.

This blog is for writing, not for reading.

That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t read it. You can and should, if you want to. But this space is mine, and for me. You’re a visitor here. And I think we both need to remember what that means, and why it’s okay.

Most spaces on the Internet — all those Town Squares — treat us like we’re pairs of eyeballs with wallets attached. We’re commoditized, organized, and overly-alrogithm’d into lists and feeds and little boxes. Everything is content. You, the reader, are incentivized to engage with content, even when it’s unhealthy for you. And I, the creator, am incentivized to lose sleep over ensuring the content I make is something you can engage with, even if it’s unhealthy for me.

In other words, the point of making content is to create value for the reader, and any value the writer extracts is just a bonus. In this space, I will be consciously doing the opposite. Everything I write and create here will be for my own benefit, first and foremost, and any value you extract from reading it will be the bonus.

So, it’s for me. I’m willing to share, of course. I hope the words on these pages do good things for your brain. But you’re not the reason I’m putting them here.

This blog puts good things into the world.

There’s enough negativity on the Internet. There’s enough people harping endlessly about all our problems, all the ways we’re destroying each other and the world around us. There’s enough angry rants and despairing tirades about every subject imaginable.

Indeed, there was enough of it on my old blog. That’s part of the reason I didn’t like looking at it anymore.

So, I won’t write things here, unless they’re good. That doesn’t mean I won’t be critical. And it doesn’t mean it’s a safe space where all worldviews are tolerated or welcome. It’s still my space. I get to decide what’s “good”.

I have other venues for venting, complaining, bellyaching, monetizing. I love doing all those things. But I choose not to clutter this blog with them.

Does any of this make sense? Maybe not — and that’s fine. The important thing is, the part of my brain that needed to type all this is releasing the good chemicals, now that I’ve typed it. The world is a little teeny tiny bit better than it was, at least for me.

I’ll write about books and video games here. I’ll write about my own books, too. I’ll write about writing. And if you read it, maybe your world will be a teeny tiny bit better, too, if only for a few minutes.