Beginning (again)
Maybe this year will be better than the last.
In 2016, I retired my old blog (where I’d been writing silly, over-earnest posts since 2004) and started a new one on my portfolio website. I intended to write regularly, a mix of reflections, short essays, and writing exercises; maybe even some short stories and flash fiction. My ambition faltered almost immediately. The timing somehow wasn’t right. I succeeded in posting a few times, but soon months, then years, were passing between one and the next.
Ten years later, I’m hoping the timing might finally be right, to . . . well, write. Life looks very different than it did in 2016. I’m not quite the same person who labored at trying to make something of that previous work. I write far more than ever before and I’d like to think I’ve gotten better at it. My kids are teens now. I’ve entered a (presumably) more thoughtful and considered stage of life now that I’m in my mid-forties. My debut young adult novel, Light in the Canyon, published by Slant Books, comes out in June and this winter I transitioned to UX writing from graphic design.
So once again I find myself retiring an old blog (was it also silly and over-earnest?) and starting a new one (hopefully less silly, but probably still over-earnest).
That word: blog. I’ve never liked it, but it reminds me of so many people, places, events, feelings, and former versions of myself that I can’t insist on distain. It reminds me of when both life and the internet — the blossoming wonder of sharing ourselves with others and discovering the world in startling new ways — still felt hopeful, wholesome, exciting. Occasionally, even beautiful.
I hesitated for weeks before writing this first post because I thought I needed an angle, a purpose, some specific hook to make this new version of my blog special, uniquely interesting. But maybe all I really want is to rediscover the spirit of why I ever wrote online at all, starting all the way back in 2004: I just want to say what’s on my mind from time to time, comment on something that moves or intrigues me, share things I’m excited about. Maybe that’s enough.