I’m back in the saddle again.

Yes readers, I broke into the castle, stole the sacred manuscript, and escaped the country with its contents.

Actually, it was the technical equivalent of breaking open a firebox without a key. I wish it were more like Daniel Elsberg sneaking the Pentagon Papers into publication, but the point is that I had lost access to the blog some number of years ago, and so it’s been in an archive state waiting for me to spend a weekend extracting the content and migrating it to a new site.

So it’s back! And I think I’m going to post to it.

Why a blog

This blog started in 2002, which was still pretty early days on the Internet. I had been writing consistently since I was in high school. I wrote and edited professionally, so it seemed like a new and easy way to share my writing with others.

The big disruption

In the early 2010s, I signed up for Twitter. At first, I meant it to be a side feature of my blog. At the time, it was known as a “microblogging” service. Great, I figured. I can have more thoughtful posts on my blog and my most recent “tweets” in the sidebar.

I got sucked in. Twitter was such a fun and mostly whimsical place back then. I followed comedians and newsmakers. I read a lot of very good, short blasts of genius and creativity. Twiter at its best felt like a great dinner party.

The more time I spent on Twitter, the less I spent on the blog. Becoming a father, too, really put a premium on my time. The blog whithered. Here’s what that looked like

Posts per year

• 2002: 81
• 2003: 49
• 2004: 51
• 2005: 46
• 2006: 77
• 2007: 27
• 2008: 23
• 2009: 32
• 2010: 0
• 2011: 0
• 2012: 8
• 2013: 9
• 2014: 5
• 2015: 6
• 2016: 0
• 2017: 1

Bring it back

Twitter was fun for a long time, but became less fun and more derisive. Then it became just bad. More about that elsewhere.

I think there are many of us who miss the way the Internet used to be. Back then, it was mostly made by humans for humans.

So let’s bring it back. Each of us. This is my little corner of that.