Karl T.

The euphoria at feeling like we've finally gotten out from under the oppression of the last eight years of being ashamed of ourselves and our country. The outrage in the midst of that victory, that so-called 'Christians' could spend millions of dollars to 'protect' their institutions by denying recognition to a whole segment of society. My first physical exam in over a decade, and the growing realisation that not only am I not immortal, I have entered into middle age.

This has been what I used to euphemistically call 'an experientially-dense week.'

I have kept my head down for the past year and change for many reasons -- my creative energy has been at a low ebb, I have been wary of speaking out politically in a society that seems obsessed with wiretapping and privacy invasion, and I have felt that I didn't have much to add to a world in which every dingbat with an opinion has a blog. I'm also wrestling with the question of how much of my writing/data to keep on other people's servers (my mail has lived on Google's servers for over a year now, and I'm still not sure how I feel about that), and how much time I have to devote to my own personal computing infrastructure. Being my own sysadmin used to be fun; now it feels entirely too much like work.

There's also some perfectionism involved -- I didn't want to clutter my livejournal with memes and LOLcats and 'trivia,' but I'm beginning to realise that writing for livejournal is a very, very different thing from writing for publication, even when it's self-publication. It seemed obvious to me at one time that there are some things I write that should be hosted on my own hardware, and some that belonged out where my friends could see it easily, and I think I had some vain hope that RSS/Atom aggregation was going to save the day. But re-inventing infrastructure is so very 1990. And perhaps most important of all, it doesn't matter what you're using to publish if there isn't any content.

So I am punting the infrastructure question by the simple expedient of copy-and-paste, and folks who read me on LJ can comment there, and folks who have subscribed to Dragons and Elegance can comment there, and we'll take it as it comes. Because, after all, if I'm the only one reading this stuff, it makes no difference whatsoever. But if you have an opinion, please, share it and be welcome.

Every period of writing activity starts with a single post. This one may not be polished, or even particularly coherent, but it means I showed up to the page. Or at least to the Emacs buffer.

Be excellent and loving to one another, my friends. We've got a lot of work in front of us, but we don't have to do it alone.