Awkward
Going into the first full day of my return to blogging and, to be honest, it feels a little weird. I haven’t really had an outlet for my so-called creativity in the last few years outside of my 9 – 5 and my soon to be defunct side venture at (the inestimable) Surfacade, Inc. The level of control, of freedom I have here is, to say the least, daunting.
But I think the real issue here is that when I first started in the late 90s, there was no “blogosphere” but there were several tight-knit communities of creatives and techies (for the most part) strewn across the globe and plugged into only a handful of sites. And so while we all had voices, it felt as though we were only listening to each other. It was almost as if we were workshopping amongst ourselves in a room with glass walls — but that room was somewhere in Siberia.
That’s no longer the case. My lawyer is online (and very, very real). My (step)son is online. My mother sent me a MySpace message (through a friend of hers, but that’s neither here nor there). If they ever decide to Google me, they’ll undoubtedly reach this site. So — and I mean all jokes and delusions aside — what does that mean for me? What sort of effect will the things I say here have on my relationships with my family and friends? What sort of effect should it have? Should I hold back? Am I made up of the sort of stuff that could be labeled as offensive? Or weird? Or stupid? Was I ever, really? No clue. We’ll find out soon enough.
In the meantime, hello again to some of my old friends: Antoine Hester, Jason Walker, Sarah Huny Young, Stephen Higgens. Hello to some of my new friends: Eric Carroll, Liz Burr, John C. Bland, II.