In all the hubbub of getting the project section going, I’ve been ignoring the more bloggish portion of the site. But after putting together the Countdown To Launch, it became impossible to ignore it any longer. So this is my inaugural blog post, in which I’ll try to guess what the hell I intend to blog about.
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Historically, I used to write lots of things: novels, short stories, book reviews, software reviews, rants about human behavior, funny stories about my kids, etc. But when the pandemic came, something broke inside me, and to be honest, I don’t yet know whether the damage was permanent or is just taking a long time to heal. (Everything takes longer to heal when you pass 50, so maybe that applies to soul damage too.)
Those who’ve enjoyed my novels might be dismayed to learn that I haven’t written a word of fiction since March of 2020. There’s a lot to unpack in that, which I intend to expand on sooner or later, but for now let’s just say that I’m having trouble seeing fiction as the best contribution I can make in a world bursting at the seams with existential crises.
I’ve also stopped writing book reviews. Immerse or Die was a pretty intense project, with almost 1000 reviews posted over 4 years, but I don’t love how negative it had to be. On the other hand, I really can’t see myself becoming a flower-growing, “everything is wonderful” kind of book reviewer either. So what does that leave? Does the world need another toothless book reviewer? I think not.
Software reviews are a possibility, I suppose, but there are plenty of people out there doing that already, and I’m not convinced I’d be adding enough value to the conversation. I hate cloud-based tools, loathe the modern concept of eternal software rental, and have no patience for wading through the tsunami of marketing BS that pushes each new product up onto the beach. So I guess we’ll have to count that as a “No” too.
But setting aside all the things it will not be, I think what I’m aiming for is the same thing I was aiming for with my newsletter: a place where I can talk about fiction, culture, puzzles and humor and hopefully get some engagement back from people with similar interests. Add in side conversations about ideas, games, and tall tales, and it has the potential to be a nice place to visit; to put your feet up and let your hair down. An email-based newsletter was always going to be a difficult way to create community, but a blog with a decent comment system should be a much better fit.
So with that in mind, I hereby christen this blog the new “Liar’s Hearth.” May your glass always be full and your stories outrageous
Creating online communities is easy; but doing it ethically is not.
Over the last few decades, we’ve developed many hacks and tricks - a playbook, if you like - for tempting communities of like-minded humans to gather into online echo chambers, where they can be manipulated in demographically unified buckets. So before I go too far, I need to ask myself an important question: Is blogging inherently evil? Or is it possible to thread this needle without crossing over to the dark side?
Over on TrustCafe, James Young was trying to make sense of the broken American system that is being twisted out of all recognizable shape by the current Republican regime. He asked simply, “How did my country get here?”
I replied with my own take on the question, and then realized that my answer fit perfectly into this new blog stream that I’ve been thinking about.
For years I’ve felt guilty about my use of online shopping. All those little packages coming from big Eastern cities, all the way across the continent, to be driven to my door by a harried little man in an overworked Honda. Surely that’s wasteful compared to me just going to the local bigbox outlet and buying it in person, right? Well, I recently had a thought that has me questioning that logic.