Some thoughts about writing in general
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This is not the first time I've tried to set up shop, with a blog of my
own --- a phlog, a gemlog. Nor is it the first time in the tildeverse,
nor yet on tilde.town. It's great fun to play around with static site
generators, and greater still to write your own. But all this time,
there's a problem rattling in the back of my mind --- I have such a love
for these textual environs, for all the little calm spaces, where people
write out whatever they feel like, unconcerned with SEO or like counts,
set apart from the flow of capital, and yet --- what am *I* to write
about?
What do I have to say?
That's not an easy question to answer. There's a pattern, here, one I've
participated in myself, of people coming in and saying: Alright! I've
had enough. Enough of the bloat. Enough of the trackers, the JavaScript,
the layer after layer of cruft and decay. Enough of the advertising. I'm
tired of this hyper-commerical web, tired of what's been made of past
generations' hopes for a free and open world.
So they, and I, come to Gopher, come to Gemini; and they-we wax poetic
about the virtues of plain text, how it's *so* much better, we'll stay
here for good; and in a week, the phlog goes dark.
I can't promise I won't do the same, even now. But there *must* be
something to write about, outside of internet protocols, if I am to stay.
Thoughts, feelings, stories.
I have a bit of a strange relationship with writing. When I was a kid I
always wanted to be a novelist, always playing with worldbuilding, fucking
around with fonts and line spacing in Word; bur never had the patience to
sit down and stick with the process of writing anything. Quite a long
time after that, probably when I was around 16 years old, I took college
English 101 through Dual Enrollment. It was hard, having never written an
essay before; but as time passed --- I don't remember when --- I took to
keeping journals.
There's a whole wicker chest, back at ma's place, just full of notebooks,
diaries, hundreds upon hundreds of pages of words that say ... nothing at
all. Just mindless rambling. I put on a YouTube video or an episode, and
write whatever comes into my mind. So I have beautiful handwriting; I can
write comfortably on unruled paper --- aside from bound notebooks, that
chest holds reams and reams of loose-leaf printer paper --- and yet I
struggle to write anything with *purpose*.
Public speaking is my worst class right now, but not for the reason you
might think --- the performance comes easy. Most shyness about that was
beaten out of me by the St. John Chrysostom Oratorical Festival as a
larva. It's because I can't for the life of me understand how to write
speeches.
At any rate --- I want to write more *stories*. Either original work, or
just fanfiction! (I'm a great fan of the game Rain World, at the moment.)
I want to write stories, and reviews, and little rambling essays like this
one. Reflections, arguments, whatever.
There's just one thing, really, that I want to try and avoid writing about
overmuch --- and that's technology. Hardware and software. Too much of
my time and energy's been wasted mulling over what the Best way of doing
things may be; hopping from language to language, instead of just building
the projects I want to; writing and rewriting static site generators and
CSS stylesheets, instead of *writing anything to post*.
Enough! I'm tired of fiddling with externalities. Here I am, for good?
--- artist and writer. That's what I want for myself. That's what I want
to pursue.
