Breaking the Blog Back Out, Baby

Hi there.

It's 2020, which among many other things is not, theoretically, an opportune time for blogging. We tweet, we podcast, we vlog, we watch things, and we text or tiktok or snapchat or whatever, but blogging feels like it belongs to another age. If we write regularly, we sell that as a newsletter, but a free to read, clunky user interface blog? It's like a time capsule.

(It's possible I'll modernize by either refreshing the blogger layout or moving to a more up to date platform, but for now I kinda get a kick out of how ugly this is).

I launched this blog in 2006, when I was 21 and starting a trip to Europe that would lead into a 2-3 month stay in Moscow and which, effectively, kickstarted my life abroad. 2006 was a good time for blogging, for the broader internet and for where I was in life.

But! 2020 is a convulsive time, globally and personally. The global stuff is apparent - COVID-19, the ways we have altered our day-to-day lives to protect ourselves from COVID-19, the rise of the far right around the world and the way that may or may not accelerate, the US election, the drumbeat of climate change and global warming in the background, the economic tumult around the world, and so on. I remember growing up in the 90s and sort of abstractly thinking the world was boring and wouldn't it be fun to live amidst history, and well, careful what you abstractly wish for.

Personally, I'm blessed and privileged enough that the convulsions are mostly positive and mostly of my own doing. I stepped away from my job to try making it as an entrepreneur, starting with a podcast studio. There's some continuity there, and since I've worked at home the past 8 years, my day-to-day isn't shifting as much as it might. But it's a big change for me. I'm also likely to remain out of the US for the first time since 2010, which creates its own dynamics.

One of the things these changes opened up for me is the space to start writing more. I've been journaling over the years - my brother bought me an Olivetti typewriter that I've used to track things since our move to Bulgaria, six years and a country ago. I wrote a novel that never got anywhere while I was in Bulgaria, and a handful of stories. And I wrote a lot at my job in a much more functional way. Public creative writing has not been a feature, though, a couple of exceptions aside.

I have a more visible public profile than I did when I was 21, and I have more free time than I did from the ages of 27-35, so here I am, breaking out the blog again.

I plan to write about a few things on here, and I plan to write irregularly but not rarely - let's say at least a couple times a month. Here's what I expect to write about:

1. Things I'm reading - mostly books (I'm thinking of a monthly review of the books I read as a loose format).
2. Things I'm listening to - music and podcasts, though for podcasts it will be more on the personal side, since I have a blog on the Shortman Studios site for the business side of things
3. Places I'm visiting or thinking about - not super travel focused, since we can't travel much in 2020 and the 'here's what I saw on a trip' writing is not where I want to be focused, but nevertheless, I love places and that's the throughline to the start of this blog.
4. Things I'm thinking about - I expect this to be the least frequent category, but occasionally I'll have a 'take' on something outside of these other lanes.

I don't expect to touch on investing here - I still have a Seeking Alpha account, and if that's not enough I'll probably set up something separate.

Anyway, I'm excited to start writing again. I plan to write up the three books I read in June as a next post. Let me know if you have any thoughts, and thanks for reading.