Paradise Found

This weekend I was reminded I had a blog when WordPress so kindly sent an email informing me that my annual subscription renewal was coming up, should I want to change or manage it. Upon receiving this notice, it occurred to me that I had not, in fact, written in said blog for quite some time, and perhaps I should consider canceling my subscription. Surely the practical move, since until two days ago I’d forgotten I even started a blog.

However. I’ve never really been one to do the practical thing – just ask my parents, they’ll explain – and besides, after observing an abundance of unsavory content in the news (and everywhere) right now, instead of consuming it mindlessly, I’d prefer to write my own.

If we’re being honest — which we are, generally — I am not particularly enjoying anything I’m consuming these days — whether it be articles, books, media — and it could be me, for sure. I am absolutely willing to reckon with that possibility. But, in fairness, I do a deep dive of the internet fairly often, as well as wandering into various bookstores on a regular basis in hopes of uncovering something interesting, organically, the old-fashioned way.

And I don’t know, man. Everyone appears to be saying mostly the same things, in only marginally different ways. Regardless of politics, I might add. Are we all following the same manual? I’m tempted to simply blame widespread access to LLMs — it seems like an easy scapegoat.

Of course, perhaps I’ll sound the same too. But at least it will be in my own words, I guess.

Besides disillusion with the current available content and pure stubbornness to continue something I’ve started, there are a lot of other good reasons to revisit the blog. As an escape from the news, for one. I’d describe myself as a “newsy” person, usually — I like to keep a pulse on stuff — but lately the news cycles have become mostly unbearable. Not from a liberal or conservative standpoint, per se (although yes) – but just, objectively, all of it. It’s all too much.

There’s only so much absurdity you can absorb before reaching a saturation point. Unfortunately — or fortunately, depending how you look at it — I’ve hit atrocity capacity. The fortunate angle is that now I am compelled to write instead of succumbing to the whims of current events and superficial clutter. So we’ll see how it goes.