My friend Geof Morris passed away a couple weeks ago. He was the one that encouraged me to start journaling online in the first place. I had put some stuff up on a website before that, grasping for “blogging” before it was even a thing as early as 1997. I already miss the big guy and his big opinions, but maybe it’s time to get out there and start posting again. I’ve mostly kept silent during the last few years. The turbulent and toxic discourse online discouraged me from writing very much. I’ve grown increasingly dissatisfied with social media and I’m also very unhappy with giving them my content for free as they make money off of me. I’m tired of being advertised to and yelled at on a constant basis. I want to re-take ownership of my online presence more and I can do that here.

My children are now old enough to be on social media but they have mostly disdained it (maybe they are smarter than me.) However, they know how to use Google just as well as any online user and so do their friends, so I don’t feel comfortable posting very much about them anymore to respect their privacy. They are gradually growing into two awesome people but that does cut out a part of my life that I would want to journal about.

So what else is there to talk about? The pandemic gutted the music industry that I love and also poke fun of so much, but lately there have been green shoots in the ground and slowly new concerts and albums are coming out and I want to resume with my music reviews. Music is one of the constants I’ve clung to as everything else has changed and while some of the voices have changed there is still a lot out there to listen to. I miss having intelligent conversations about musical art as intelligent conversation has largely been stunted by Facebook and Twitter. Maybe we can get some of that back here.

Of course there’s also sports. Much like my musical interests, the pandemic turned all of that upside down and where much of the musical world came almost to a halt, the sports world chose to grind on, for better and for worse, and the effect has blunted some of my enjoyment. Here again though, everything is trying to get back to some sort semblance of “normal” whatever that is.

I also want to write about my faith, which has largely been hijacked by charlatans and wannbe dictators. I know the popular terms these days are “deconstructed” or “ex-vangelical.” I don’t know that I ever considered myself evanglical. Even though I spent a lot of time in that world I always had one eyebrow raised. Now days, I look at that world with even more cynicism but I’m trying to come to terms with that past and what it means for what I believe now.

Most of my posts for the last twenty years were just me trying to grasp the world around me and try to understand where I fit in with that. I’m a lot older now and I know a lot more about myself and the world around me, but I want to get back to asking questions and trying to understand my surroundings. I want to do it in an environment that doesn’t elicit an immediate comment or reply pushing something down my throat. I’ve been looking for a reason to restart online journaling again. I hate that it is because of the loss of a dear friend of mine, but let’s take this as an opportunity to move forward again. Ad astra per aspera, big guy.