Revisiting the old blog

I used to blog. Then came Twitter. Why go to the effort of writing hundreds of words to vent one’s frustration when venting / reflecting could instead be accomplished with just 140 characters? So I essentially stopped writing this blog and told myself that character count limitations of a tweet would help me become a better, more succinct writer. That was fun while it lasted. Now Twitter is owned by a megalomaniacal man-child with a serious personality disorder, and he is doing his best to reduce Twitter to a steaming pile of crap. I don’t like to spend my time there anymore. And, frankly, I don’t think the character count limitation was all that beneficial as a writing exercise after all.

So what’s a guy to do? Then I remembered — I have this blog. Why not dust off the database and start blogging again?

Over the years, I’ve started and stopped blogging several times. But now that I’m retired and starting to work on finishing a novel that I started to write a few years ago, spinning up the blog again feels like a purposeful exercise. Some days I may work on the novel. Some days I may blog.

I have kept a few of the posts from the archives online, but I have eliminated a few, mostly because they contain dead links or were no longer relevant to the purpose of speaking my truth. I also have another blog, Back To Oakland, that I spun up when Anna and I moved back to Oakland from the midwest. Since we’re no longer in Oakland I decided to leave that blog alone as an archive of a particular time in a particular place.

I make no promises about the cadence of new posts, nor about the scope of content. But you are welcome to visit and read. If you have a thought or want to respond, feel free to ping me at mark@hurty.net

Posted 14 March 2023 by Mark ·