As Good A Time As Any For New Starts
So on this evening of historic proportions in the good ol' US of A, I'm blessed to be able to write once again on what is now called a blog. My friend Mike has been working on a redesign for the site for a few months now, and I'm stoked to have a modern version of my little online 'zine. I can work on it and put up photos and write stuff and put up music and it's way, way better than the one I first did in 1996 that I "hammered out code" for. I learned as time went on to make it slightly better, but Adobe GoLive was my last improvement and it finally got to be too much to make it worthwhile -- I couldn't handle any real programming. So I sought professional help. And finally, over the next few months we'll see some content up, skatepunk.net will switch over, and invite visitors into my little hidden world again.
What better time to kick this off again than tonight, on the night that we elected Barack Obama as President of the United States of America. As much as I am terrified that some racist militia nutjob from Idaho or some KKK dumbass from the South will try to do something stupid, I'm also that happy to have some reason for hope coming into office. Now it's time for action, Mr. Obama, I can't wait to see it and support it. It's a night of new beginnings, of saying "Yes We Can" and on that note I restart Randumb Notes...
I've been writing this thing since 1998, way before I ever heard the term blog. I remember the first time and person who I heard that term "blog" from, and my reaction, but that's another story. For the past two years I've pretty much been avoiding writing, for a number of reasons. Break-ups, deaths, and general personal turmoil... For those who followed my little journal, I've made them very aware of my self-conscious nature when it comes to baring my soul to the world. It was always therapeutic, but there was so much ego attached to that I've always struggled with it... it's been written about too much, and I guess since I've decided to write again there's not much point in going on and on about why I shouldn't write in this thing. But it's worth discussing once...
In June of 2006 I wrote this:
Blah, blah, blah. I feel like I should write, but everytime I think of something to write about, I feel like it's so ego-driven and self-centered that I feel like Mike V. And if you've read this thing at all you known I've been so torn about that. It's a Catch 22--it's both gutsy and vulnerable to put yourself out there, which is healing and therapeutic and interesting to read, but it also requires a sense of ego that relies on the assumption that people are inherently interested in what I write. Maybe I should assume that people are interested in me if they're reading this, but that's such a bold statement and seems so freaking macho that I can't stand it. Or I could assume that people are interested in people, which sets it up the opposite way--that it's really not about me at all, but about humanity. That makes it work a little more, but is also kinda depressing. But that's better than the other option. I'll go with that for now...
Back to Election Day 2008: Anyway, I guess I still feel much the same way, but not so strongly that I am going to stop. I also keep thinking of how much the web climate has changed since I started, and how there are now so many blogs that a poor one probably won't get noticed too much, and how now that everyone has one it doesn't seem quite so ego-driven... but that's not true--it's just that everyone does so many things that are ego-driven. Anyway, someone smart once said something about the 'unexamined life is not worth living' and I've always taken that to heart. So as much as I'd like to think that I can just go on with it and forget talking about writing the blog, I know myself and I'll probably do it all over again in a year or two or maybe next week, who knows. But I won't in my next post, I know that, so stay tuned.
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