Time marches on. There’s no fighting it. With time comes change, and evolution, and death and birth. This blog is not an exception. Changes in theme, evolution of WordPress, death of topics and the constant gestation, birth and abandonment of ideas and new directions. So much is possible, so little is ever actually done.
My posting statistics have steadily fallen in recent years. Three or four posts a month, then two, then one, then one every 3 months. I think about this, obsess over this, constantly. As absurd as it sounds, of all things, Twitter has brought this more into focus. I follow other web designers and developers who constantly blog about the dumbest shit; it’s nothing but well known CSS hacks and “top 100 plugins for WordPress to make your dick grow!”. I look at these tweets, and the resulting retweets and fortune and fame, and I think “There but for a lack of free time go I.”
I look at my lengthy list of domain names, my vast swath of “web properties” as I’ve taken to calling them, going mostly unused… I look at the dawt net in jrsmith.net and lament that this is not a network of any kind. It’s all such a waste.
I look at my 9 years worth of posts, a good 90% of which is bullshit emo drivel, or chronicles of bullshit emo drama. Most of it could be completely washed away and this site would be the better for it. I find myself more and more inclined to do so.
It may surprise some of you, but the things that I talk about here, and have always tended to talk about here, are the things I dislike talking about with other people. I dump those things here so they don’t spill over. It’s gotten me into — I want to say trouble, but that’s overstating — irritating misunderstandings. It’s no longer safe to do so, which goes a long way to explain my unwillingness to post.
So, just as soon as I have some spare time, I’m going to archive all the existing entries and comments and begin deleting anything that doesn’t have some kind of worth. I’m moving the three or so entries that survive the slaughter to itsjustyouand.me, where I will start fresh and blog about things that are relevant to my interests: web design, perl, python, databases, art, books, movies, TV shows, phones, fourth century mating rituals and what having a third testicle really means for a man in today’s world.
Throughout my life, when things have started to go bad, I’ve coped by simplifying and shaking things up. Removing the cruft. Assimilating a new habit, denying existing ones. It works well enough; the hue of life shifts just enough to smack of freshness and renewal, while retaining enough resemblance to the old one to keep shock from setting in. And while life right now is not particularly awful, I am unhappy with my circumstances enough to crave change.
Doing something with this blog is a good first step.