Welcome to the new site design! I basically gave up!
I was getting tired of trying to massage the back-of-envelope-sketched layout of the previous one into a final form I liked, so I’ve started over with WP’s default freebie theme, Twenty Twenty-Five. I’m trying to make more things in general, so anything that makes getting started back to work, finishing projects, and uploading any easier gets the nod right now. I forgot to reckon with a couple elements that were tied to old templates, like the social media links, but those are less important than the posts, so they’ve fucked off for now until I have the free time to, um, unfuck them.
As with Donald Trump’s first term in office [sidebar: my brother adopted TFG as shorthand in our text conversations some years ago and that stuck as a diminutive; but now that it’s Chief Executive 2: Electric Boogaloo1, the word “former” is outdated, so hereafter I’ll probably be substituting a ‘C’ for “current], I have quite a few drafts of posts started, but I’ve been sidetracked doomscrolling the post-election deluge of analysis, outrage, regular rage (much of it impotent), and breaking news items. I wasn’t surprised at the events transpiring since the inauguration—in fact, I expected something similar to what’s been taking place, minus the manic stomping through federal agencies Elon Musk has been doing. But the whole thing, and recognizing this pattern beginning again, has set me to soul-searching. Again.
Doomscrolling isn’t fulfilling, but it is easy. Conversely, making stuff for others to doomscroll is a very saturated field. I think when I first started to post things online I was concerned with seeming too scattered, when so many authoritative voices then and now were insisting that one must find one’s niche to gain an audience, and therefore one has to specialize. I don’t find any rectitude or integrity in avoiding politics or current events here. I’d love to be building a space to inform as well as celebrate and analyze (and rant, sometimes), but I also struggle with my lack of reach and what makes sense to spend my time on.
And behold, sticking to just the art and writing about the arts in general has got me where I am today! Sarcasm notwithstanding, it looks to me like most of my readers are bots—and don’t get me wrong, bots, I’m not saying I don’t like the attention, you’re just not persons. And whatever I make, I make for those. Which isn’t a complaint or a lament so much as a way to think about the future of what I post as ‘might as well throw all the various pastas at the wall for now because it can’t diminish what isn’t there.’
I’m somewhat active in local politics, LGBTQ issues, and online/digital rights, but have mostly kept my blogging and social media posts narrowed to the creative stuff. I’ve generally stayed away from confessional writing as being uninteresting. Maybe it is interesting, though? Raw, unfiltered unburdening! Soul vomit, stinky with wretched rumination—maybe that’s exactly the stuff I should be writing! Or maybe not, but I have no idea how to know. It’s not so fun to do a ton of work just because, but I’ve still got that pestery demon that keeps jabbing me in the baby back ribs just often enough and sharply enough to irritate me, and if I make things he stops for a bit.
It’s tricky to imagine you’re writing for an audience when, most of the time, it’s just you shouting into the digital void. It isn’t as vast as the actual capital-vee Void of the expanding physical universe2, even if it feels like it is from here on the inside. I do think I should keep trying, though. That void ain’t gonna shout at itself.
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