It has now been one year since I've restarted my blog and started posting every Friday. The actual anniversary was February 10, but that wasn't a Friday so instead I'm celebrating today, with this, the 53rd blog post since the reset. I'm pretty good at starting things but not always so good at keeping them going, so I feel pretty proud of this streak. Not only did I manage to maintain the streak, I also set myself a realistic goal.
It all started with Ignore previous instructions and resume shitposting and a promise to myself to be less serious and less precious and just write, goddamnit. As it turned out, I wrote a fair amount of pretty serious things anyway, but I mostly did it in an unserious way.
Having the blog inspired me to actually scan my weird drawings which I use to create headers or illustrate posts. All the strange symbols that you see decorating posts that look like a secret language are my drawings. I've been an avid doodler all my life and at some point the doodles started coming out as a kind of visual glossalia. They look like they should mean something, but I promise you they don't, other than whatever abstract art ever means. Sharing my drawings has been an unexpected pleasure of blogging.
So what's this blog about? #
I don't have a single topic that I blog about because I'm interested in a lot of different things. However some themes have emerged.
I have written nine book reviews or at least things that seemed a lot like book reviews. I also wrote about about an art installation in Seeing the obvious in the Turrell skyspace, a film in The inner life manifest as supernatural in The Shining, and a theater performance in Hair metal fantasy Cymbeline in McLaren Park.
I've written five posts that are about, or at least kind of about, technical writing. I've also posted five posts about, or at least kind of about, Derrida. There is some overlap between the Derrida posts and both the technical writing posts. I've posted four poems.
Given these trends, I think you could say that writing itself--whether as creative writing, technical writing, or philosophy about language and writing--is my major theme. Even when I'm writing about technology, I'm writing about code for the purpose of tracking books or about the weird booklists of famous venture capitalists or about why LLMs are bad at sestinas.
My favorite posts of this year #
Not every post can be a banger, as my spouse pointed out, but also not only that, the posts that end up getting read and shared the most are not necessarily the ones I think are the best. Although, there is some overlap! Here are my top three favorite posts (though I'm cheating a little because I'm including series).
Why I like it: I manage to unpick something about the nature of my favorite sword and sorcery heroes, and based on reader's responses, it seems like the idea connected.
- The Grammatology series containing (so far) Review: Of Grammatology by Jacques Derrida, Dangerous texts: Vajrayana practice texts, technical manuals, and your annual review, and Logocentrism again?
Why I like it: I manage to talk about some of the most annoyingly impenetrable writing about writing ever and make it kind of funny. I also got some cool ideas and smooshed them into each other and made them kiss.
- Haunted manuals, also a series
Why I like it: Even though like the Derrida series this one also isn't finished yet, I came up with a new weird idea and made it kiss with another weird idea from Derrida. It was also an excuse to scan in and share absolutely amazing diagrams from an 1950s manual. Something for everyone, if everyone is both vintage circuit diagram fans and Derrida fans.
TRAIN WON'T STOP #
It's been good to write something every week and it's been good to set the intention that quality is not the most important thing. Doing it is more the important thing. And after a time, you've got some quantity, some of which may have some quality. And as someone (though probably not Stalin) said, "Quantity has a quality all its own." I feel I've delivered both on my promise to post every week and my threat of postmodernism, so I will continue to post every Friday, and I will raise the threat level to include not only postmodernism but post-structuralism as well. See if you like that! (I hope you like it, actually.)
Want to know when I post something new? #
First of all, yes, it's every Friday. Usually morning California time, but sometime at lunch and sometimes really rather late. But maybe you'd like more of a reminder? I post on all the social thingies I can think of, but always Mastodon.
You can also sign up for my newsletter and I'll send you an email every time there's a blog post. That's all the newsletter is for. There is no secret stuff in the newsletter except I guess sometimes I write a cheekier intro because the newsletter has like 16 subscribers and I know most of them personally so I write with them in mind.
Finally, this blog has an RSS feed. I am the kind of nerd who added an RSS feed and a cute little icon to the bottom of every page so if you're the kind of nerd who uses an RSS reader, you can do that with my blog.
Thanks for reading, and until next week, see you on the internet!