let blog = Blog::new();

Hi.

Here we are again, I guess. As you may or may not know, this is far from my first attempt at being a #contentCreator though not many previous attempts are still available publicly. I've had various social media accounts that I tried to build a following for; I've had about three short-lived attempts at blogging, and a short Instagram photography career, either dead or on Hiatus™️; depending on how you look at it.

By the way, none of that above is meant to be demeaning to the stuff I've tried before. Some of it I enjoyed, some of it I didn't, and that's okay. All of them taught me something about myself and how I relate to the stuff I make, even if it took me about seven years to realise what it was that it taught me. And this? This is me trying again.

This time around, I'm going to do things differently, though. You know what they say:

If at first, you don't succeed, try, try and try again

That's bullshit. If you do think that's true, I advise you to read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. I like this one better.

If at first you don't succeed, either try again but in a different way, or try something else

That's what this is. It's me trying again but differently (in a lot more ways than just this blog). There's a reason I set this up as a static website on a tiny unknown rock in the vast digital ocean (get it?). Away from recommendation systems, from likes, shares, subscriptions, content schedules, click-through rates, popups, ads, #Engagement_TM and everything else that The Internet™️ has become synonymous with except the actual technology. I don't want this place to go viral; I don't want to build a following; I'm not sure I would like this place to be found.

If you are here, then chances are very high that you are either incredibly close to me or barely know me, if at all, and that's by design. This is where I plan to share a lot of deeply personal and possibly controversial things that I don't want swinging through the jungle forever. Because of that, I'm not going to tell you who I am, how to contact me or provide tangible context for things I'm going to be talking about. Either you already know, or I don't want you to know. That's nothing personal, but this is a place for me to just talk. This is where I come to shout into the void, if you will.

As a brief aside, a result of this being my space and there is no convenient way you can contact me, I will make all the jokes and spelling mistakes that I want, and there is nothing that you can do about it. HA!

Now, reading this, you might well be thinking, "if you don't want to be found, why have a blog at all?". Good question, hypothetical reader. My mental representation of you is very wise, indeed. The truth is that I have no idea. If I didn't want people to know, I should not publish anything and keep it to myself. Still, there is an itch that I'm hoping to scratch with this website. Many of the things on this website have sat in a folder on my computer for a long time. Somehow that's just not the same. I'm also very prone to black and white thinking, so if you do want a more pretentious reason, I guess you could say this is me trying to see the world in more shades of grey (get it?).

I'm wondering which of these words I'm going to have to eat in the years to come. I have a slight suspicion it might be an awful lot of them. I guess only time will tell.