New Beginnings

I’ve been on the Internet in one form or another for nearly 30 years, starting with using Telnet to play MUDs, browsing Usenet during the great flamewars of the 90’s, and was an early user of Mosaic before Netscape existed, peering at a coffee pot webcam in Cambridge, England. Since then, it’s kind of crazy how many ways I’ve tried to socialize and/or record my thoughts publicly. I’ve had multiple blogs, played around with Twitter, Facebook, Google+, different boards, and for the last couple years, a microblog (http://holliston.micro.blog).

One thing that I’ve decided is that I do not want to provide regular and personal content to the big companies like Facebook, especially since this isn’t about marketing, but about personal communication to friends and family. The barrier to use is a bit higher (people need to actively go and look at the site, or go through some archaic RSS reader for notifications), but that’s OK. This isn’t about clicks. This is an understanding about myself that I came to a few years ago, but it’s taken me a while to re-initialize this blog.

But here I am, initialization process underway! Why now? Big personal changes are going to necessitate much more effort into communicating to friends and family what’s going on in my (and my family’s) life. We’re moving to New Hampshire from Oregon in only a few months, away from all my friends going back decades, away from my parents and my Dad’s family, and away from all the well-worn grooves on my life. This is an adventure, and perhaps a once in a lifetime one. As much as I can, I want to share with those that mean a lot to me this new chapter of experimentation in my life!

I’m going to try to post regularly, but make no promises. The goal is just to make it worth checking in on regularly, and make it interesting to those that make that click over.