there was a point in time when i used to blog daily. those posts are lost somewhere on the internet now, or perhaps stuffed into a mysql database in one of my many unlabeled hard drives. they were logs of my day and my reflections, much more point-by-point than this era of writing, and they were accompanied by photos taken from the camera that i’d carry in my journeys. this was a time before smart phones, before social media, when carrying a camera and blasting your life story out to the world was still a novel thing. but here is where tech leaves me behind. some things can get too easy. as it became more convenient to take shots, write, and post, the less appealing i found it to be. maybe i also stopped seeing the internet as such a safe place to do this kind of work. it’s why i haven’t really promoted this part of my website. it helps me feel safe, even though at the end of the day it’s all just pixels and urls. i want this place to be where i can let my guard down, don’t feel like i have to impress anyone with flowery sentences or breathtaking insights. all the snark i threw up on twitter that whole decade ended up being cringe-worthy anyway. and maybe those old posts would be too, if i could access them again. but since i can’t right now, they sit in my mind as epics – beautifully scripted, open and honest, a time when my concerns were more artful and less about the grown up shit. that’s the funny thing about writing regularly. writing can really feel like pulling teeth. you second-guess every cliché phrase like “pulling teeth” and then your mind runs through every writer out there who has used it before, and then every writer who is so much more creative than you that they were able to conjure cleverer colloquialisms. like, writing is like hand-feeding a rabid dog or writing is like carrying a porpoise up a narrow flight of stairs. and then you hate yourself for trying too hard. and then you wonder why most people in this world don’t try hard enough. and then you decide that everyone in this really really does, except for you. and then you realize you’re talking about yourself in “you” statements because it’s easier that way. and then i wonder if my blog is getting too depressing.