Remember blogs?
Hello there.
This morning I was reading a blog post about the internet pre-"2.0", which led me to another blog post about some cool blogging platforms, and this collided with the nascent thought in my brain about bringing back my old, now-defunct "West Denver Birder" blog, and here we are.
I don't intend this to be as strictly focused as that old iteration was, though. For one thing, that really felt like a job. That's something that feels problematic to me about the internet these days - that to be a "success" you have to have a focus, you have to have GOALS. Sometimes I just want to fart around intellectually, talk about what I'm reading. Or watching. Or what I'm stuck on in my head. Or whatever. Get ready.
That's not to say I don't have ANY goals here.
A few projects I intend for this space, to begin with
- To use Kevin Kelly's The Big Here Quiz in conjunction with guided questions from Noah Charney's These Trees Tell a Story (Bookshop|Library) to act as a framework for exploring my local area.
- To write more about what I'm reading, share passages that struck me, and generally use this as a sort of digital commonplace book. I've gotten to a place in my reading life where I've found places where books I'm reading are being discussed that don't really lend themselves strongly to responses, e.g. podcasts, years-old Reddit threads, etc. This'll help me organize my thoughts and responses and be less of a mere consumer.
- To share what's going on in my birding life. My birding has really transitioned in the past year or two from the always-on-the-chase to build my life list to something that still includes the occasional chase, but is much more quotidian in its appreciation of what's nearby. I want to use this space to go deeper instead of broader. My main outlet for the past couple of years has been Instagram, and while that at its best feels like a national community of birders, at its worst it's just kind of...well, not that.
So I guess I'm back. At least for now.