Is this blog depressing?
Is it morbid? I just write about the kind of stuff I think about and read about on a daily basis. So I don’t think so. But I’m wrong about almost anything so I would not be surprised if it was.
One thing I know for sure though is that this blog sucks. I know that without a doubt. And I can tell you exactly why.
First off, I’ve got this pathological need to do everything in the most independent and usually most difficult fashion possible. I have this idea that I can build, configure or fix anything if I just try and I resent it when too much of the work has been done for me already. I dislike average consumer choices and am forever dooming myself to difficult experiences with more unusual options. Therefore, rather than just talking about my feelings on facebook or putting up a blogspot, I had to install wordpress on the server sitting next to the desk in our office. If this page is slow or if it hangs pulling down images sometimes or if it’s just straight down, it’s because it’s running on the computer in the same room as the cats’ litter box. All I have for a connection is a cable modem, so my upstream bandwidth is pretty weak and on top of that, my dick of a cable company drops my connection for a random hour here, random hour there. Plus the computer has a very slightly bad power cord so if it gets kicked or the power strip gets moved the wrong way the computer gets rebooted.
Second of all is just that I’m easily distracted. I have a penchant for putting a brief flurry of manic effort into a project and then abandoning it for other shiny things. That’s why I’ve had a disassembled guitar in a case for the last six years and that’s why this blog has had the old old school default wordpress theme for the last 8 months. I’m not blind, I realize it’s heinous. That disgusting drab green with the italic title? Come on. If it doesn’t look so bad it’s because I’m trying to fix it a little at a time.
I also still haven’t really figured out what kinds of stuff I write here. I haven’t figured out my persona, subject matter or target audience. I had gigantic ideas for things I was going to write about when I first put this up. Among other ideas, I had planned to write a multi-part treatise on religion, my own or lack thereof and how the various eastern philosophies are an extremely rationale way for modern scientific man to think about the boundaries of reality. What happened to that? Partly it’s that I’m just not sure I could explain myself, partly that I’m not quite ready to open myself up that wide and partly that I can only keep hold of those kinds of insights when I’m actively reading and studying in that vein. But mostly it’s just that it’s so hard to sit down and write something of any kind of complexity when I could be reading slashdot, slate, salon, slog, ussmariner, thinkprogress or strumming on a guitar or watching TV or playing SMB3 or drinking. Like Malibu Stacy said, “Thinking too much gives you wrinkles”. In the absence of the gigantic serialized books I was going to write here, this blog just fills my compulsive need to babble into the ether from time to time. And since I haven’t quite figured out my target audience it’s self-censored babbling.
Lately this has become the place where I put photos of Catie’s pregnant belly. Those pictures are by far the best thing ever featured on these pages.
In fact, don’t read this. Just come back when I have more photos.
Update: Before anyone beats me to it, I should point out that doylepark.net/photos sucks too.
