Ok, so that was pathetic. It's four months later, let's start over.

So, this is now my second blog entry. I wrote it on May 8^th but this time I really intend to bank a few of these before I actually launch the site at the end of May. I’m determined to get into the habit of doing this over the coming weeks leading up to the website’s launch, so there should be a few entries after this for everyone too. Maybe even some that are fun to read.

However, I will admit that at the same time I remain somewhat in two minds about blogs and having an online presence, which I still wrestle with. Perhaps this is why this has taken me so long.

I’ve noticed that with the rise of social media everyone now thinks they’re important. I mean that in terms of how readily, hungrily, eagerly people seem to want to share the details of their life with the world. I’m old enough to remember a time before. An ancient time. Dusty and all-but forgotten when people wrote their personal thoughts in journals called diaries. They were written for the sake of the writer and very rarely shown to the world. In fact some diaries had locks on them to ensure that privacy. Can you imagine wanting to be so private? Heavens! However like drinking radium for one’s health and adding mercury to beauty products, this obscure old habit seems to be no more. In fact some of the more vanguard historians claim the notion of people having private diaries is akin to the Apollo Moon Landings and never existed in the first place.

At the very least we can agree that in today’s world of the internet and social media those same diary locks and keys have been thrown away. Nowadays it seems like everyone wants to bless everyone else with a running commentary on their thoughts, feelings and actions… that we all can’t wait to look at someone’s new shoes or be regaled by how they were mistreated by a barista that morning. It’s funny that the essay homework assignments people would get set like “what I did over the weekend” or “how I spent my summer” seem certainly less of a chore now that people get to publish them as installments of a chain on Treads as they humble-brag their acts of kindness (#kindness) or perhaps regale the set of (sometimes embarrassingly personal) events that let to them discovering their partner was unfaithful. I know there’s a deep vein of cynicism in what I’ve just written, but I see so much vanity around now. However, I cede that this is probably just my crumply skewed rantings, and I note that anyone’s entry about the rough time their dog had at the dog park or the bad service they got at Macy’s gets plenty of comments, so people are definitely more engaged in this sort of thing than I am.

And I’m a hypocrite if I don’t acknowledge that I’m also assuming people will cluster, excitedly around the campfire to listen to whatever it is I have to say, here on my website. Still, I’m going to give it a go. I confess I’ve mainly only used the internet for my work, as in getting reference and communication. I had a bit of presence on Twitter years ago, but found the anger, negativity and bullying to be too much. I was on Facebook a while back too, but there I found it too… (searches for the right word, can’t think of one…) Facebook. I’m still on there, in fact, although I’m not on there. By that I mean I’m still signed up (can anyone every truly be unsigned up?), but I never check it, I don’t post nor comment. I do like Instagram. The quick bites of visual and text have allowed me to discover obscure artist, films and music I wouldn’t have heard otherwise. Oh, and recipes. And I post there, too, even reviews of albums and films and books while draped in a cloak of my own vain delusion that anyone is going to care. (SIDE NOTE: I’ll continue doing that on IG and here, but these will always be positive reviews. I don’t have the time to write negatively on other people’s work.)

So here we go, here too. I promise I’ll do more than moan about kids on TikTok. I’ll do my best to entertain. And I’ll post again, hopefully sooner than four months later.

Let’s see how I do.

(Oh, and for the few or any who are wondering, this view is the popcorn ceiling is my bedroom/library and the top of my wife's stripper pole.)