Yes, it’s a blog.

It’s taken me a while to get to this. Hitting the “Publish” button, I mean. I’ve had this post typed up for a couple of weeks and this whole idea for a blog has been simmering for months but actually publishing it has been harder than I’d anticipated. The thing is, I had a blog several years ago and I really enjoyed writing those posts which I think helped make me a better writer but also… there was zero pressure. Almost no one read it and that was more than fine with me.

And now, all these years later, I say that I’d like write to more in-depth book reviews and stories about growing up in Appalachia or my life in LA and I’d like to be able to do that without running the publishing gauntlet and yet… and yet…

Look it’s been a while since my blogging days. I’m older and more experienced and more hesitant and now I also have what I suppose constitutes as the very beginning of a reputation. Am I somehow putting that reputation in danger by writing unregulated, non-professionally-edited posts? It freaks me out, man.

But, on the other hand, I could croak at any moment. (Don’t worry, I’m not dying any more than any of us subject to the laws of thermodynamics are which is to say: a little every second.) And do I really want to never have told stories about my library days or playing video games with my grandpa or trying pickle and peanut butter sandwiches for the first time or exploring my thoughts about the weird 1970s fantasy novels I’m often reading?

No, I guess not. So, despite my rampant anxiety and chronic hesitation, a blog it is. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Of course, I understand you may have questions. For instance:

Why a blog? Why not a newsletter?

Well, I already have a newsletter and, while I’m pretty okay with keeping it up when I have news I’m not great at general updates. This is partly to do with the fact that I’m a hermit with an extremely regimented, mostly uneventful life. (Which is how I like it.) I’ve no kids or pets and I don’t go on vacations or attend exciting events or do things that are generally considered newsworthy. My regular day-to-day life changes almost none at all and therefore gives me very little news to put into a letter.

Also, Newsletters feel very salesy and I’m quite bad at being salesy so, when I do get up the nerve to write a newsletter, I always end up writing what amounts to a blog post and then I always think, “Why am I not just writing a blog?”

Isn’t blogging something people did in the early 2000s?

Yes. I was one of those people. I enjoyed it immensely. I miss it.

Okay but why not Substack? I could so easily subscribe to your blog (along with all the other blogs I subscribe to) on Substack! Why host on your website?

Well, as I lived in the 2000s, I remember what it was like to go to someone’s website and read their blog and enjoy “spending time” with that person via their creative work. It was similar to visiting someone’s home and sitting on their sofa, in their living room, and letting them tell you about their day in their own space.

Reading posts on Substack reminds me of meeting up with someone in a busy mall food court and half-enjoying some Panda Express while also half-listening to the other person talk while they half-enjoy their Sbarro’s and all the while not being able to help overhearing people nearby ordering some Orange Julius or deciding to go to Auntie Ann’s instead. (And, yes, I realize malls and therefore mall food courts are—like blogs—mere shadows of their former selves but I have always pictured the internet as a big sketchy mall and I don’t intend to stop now.)

Also, I don’t like putting my creative work at the mercy of other people or, especially, businesses whose main interests do not necessarily line up with letting me do whatever I want. Listen, if I had the energy, I’d write, illustrate, and print a zine and mail it to you every month thereby time traveling past the early to teen 2000s and directly into 1996. I think I’d enjoy the hell out of doing a zine until it made me really tired. I’d probably publish only two and a half zines before I gave up. So, self hosted blogging it is.

What are you writing about here? Why should I read this?

Well, I keep a journal of my thoughts on all the books I read and, when I finish one I like, I distill my thoughts down to micro-reviews which I post on Instagram. That’s all well and good and I enjoy it. But sometimes I can’t get a book out of my head and would like to write my longer thoughts somewhere else and see if anyone else has anything interesting to say about that same book. So, I’d like to do a bit of that.

I’ve also had a lot of questions from readers about my experiences growing up in Appalachia, so I’d like to write about that as well. And I’ll write some about living in LA and New York and wherever else I happen to find myself. And probably also some food stuff because I love food and I love writing about it.

But how will I know you’ve got a new post up if Substack doesn’t send me a completely ignorable notification about it?

Well, I’d like to say that I’ll get on a regular schedule and put a new post up in a highly predictable and reassuring manner. But, let’s be honest, that probably won’t happen. I’ll get sick or busy or won’t have a good idea for a post and then I’ll fall off the schedule and feel bad about falling off the schedule and spend three months writing an apology about it which I’ll never post because I feel so bad about dragging out the apology and eventually the blog will just die. So, how about this: I will do my best to post as regularly as possible and keep you updated in the following ways:

I have an Instagram account which you can follow. I will update the stories whenever I publish a new post. Also, I’ll send out a newsletter. Does a fresh blog post warrant a newsletter? In my mind it does. If you sign up for the newsletter and you become annoyed by it, you can always unsubscribe.

Oh my God, just this introductory post about future posts is so long. Are all your posts going to be this long?

Yeah. Probably. The thing is, you’re welcome to go to any one of a million places in the sketchy internet mall if you want something shorter, more easily digestible, more easily forgotten etc. I’m doing this because I’m an extremely introverted person and my creative work is how I communicate with the world. Short form media doesn’t suit me but writing essays about life and the creative work of other people does so this is what I’m doing. I’m not producing “content”, I’m telling you who I am—simultaneously leaving behind a mark of who I was—through my writing.

To me, that’s worth more than 150 characters or 30 seconds of video. Maybe you’ll agree.