No one tagged me, which is no surprise because this project has been so dormant for so long, but there’s a set of blog questions going around that has had me thinking about my tentative efforts to paying attention to this platform once again.
Why did you start blogging in the first place?
My participation in discussion groups — especially alt.zines (and I am amazed that this old site I helped put together is still online) — dovetailed with my interest in tinkering with publishing during the early days of the web, so my old zine Rumpus Room slowly morphed into a web site to hold the features I had already published, and that slowly morphed into occasional updates, and then tools appeared that made it easier to publish those updates without writing pages from scratch all the time.
Publishing a zine in the ’90s was an expensive endeavor, since I was young and poor and trying to take the production values seriously. So my desire to express myself in some fashion shifted from print to the web, and after a while the online part took on a life of its own.
What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?
I am using what is now a basic installation of WordPress, which I was forced into using because the very old version I’d been using no longer had any support. I’ve already tinkered with this theme enough that I’m terrified of the next time that I have to radically upgrade and start tweaking a layout once more.
Have you blogged on other platforms before?
So many. I started with Blogger, moved to Grey Matter (which I still miss something awful), then migrated to early WordPress. I’ve also published side projects on Tumblr that I’ve imported into this, with varying degrees of success.
How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that’s part of your blog?
I work right from the dashboard. It’s the easiest way to work with the CMS instead of fighting against it.
When do you feel most inspired to write?
Honestly, when I’m deep in a cycle of procrastination about other things, but still try to make myself feel productive in some way.
Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?
I publish right away, but I’m very comfortable with going back later to edit. There’s a certain comfort that comes with not worrying about if anyone is paying attention any more.
What are you generally interested in writing about?
Whatever strikes me as worth documenting. Sometimes it’s a trivial personal moment I want to capture, sometimes it’s a bit of typography or gay culture that I’m excited about and want to unpack for posterity in a way I can’t on social media.
Who are you writing for?
This is very much for me at this point. I’m not entirely sure anyone still checks in, considering how long I let this lay fallow while I (tragically) devoted energy to bons mots on social media. I’ve come back to this because I finally accepted that this project has documented both profound and mundane aspects of over half my life (28 years and counting!), and it would be a terrible shame to lose any more of what has happened in that time — and other things to come — than I already have.
What’s your favorite post on your blog?
I don’t know if it’s a favorite, per se, but this 2014 entry about spacing tests is by far the post I have returned to the most.
Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?
It feels like such a lift just to overcome years of inertia at this point that I consider it a triumph just to be back in the swing of posting occasionally. My only plans for the moment are to keep sifting through the many years’ worth of old posts now tucked away as drafts to decide what is appropriate to republish.