Holy smokes. The last post I wrote for this blog was on October 18, 2017. Through the little more than two years since, this blog has been on my mind a lot. It amounted to a large amount of thinking, and the absence of any actual action. Why is that?
As with most things in life, the answers are complex and numerous. Things change. I change. My interests change. Life becomes more complicated as we grow older. I'm not the same person that I was when I started this blog nearly fifteen years ago. That's quite nearly half of my life, and it's almost incomprehensible to consider that I've maintained this blog to some degree through all of that time. I considered talking about the reasons for the absence, and even started to write a few of them. It's then that I realized a rather horrible truth: The main reason I stopped writing here is because the social internet has become a worse place to be. It feels like there's more hatred out there than ever before. It feels like no one is allowed to just enjoy something without there being a million caveats or a crate of reasons why it makes you a bad person. Politics has become more toxic than ever, and it's everywhere you look. It's become necessary to question everything you read, because there are misinformation campaigns everywhere.
It was these things that have kept me away for so long.
But still I thought about this blog, and of course I missed having a place where I could just write. About anything I wanted. I considered that I never wanted to bring any of that negativity into my writing, and as a result could offer a place free of that. It's only a small offering, but it's better than simply leaving the internet to eat itself alive. This brings me to my next point, which is that we live in an age where everyone is pressured to make everything a hustle. We're pressured to take everything that we like, and make something profitable out of it. I think this has also contributed to my absence, because let's be real: There aren't many people reading a blog on blogger written by some amateur dude who likes video games a little bit. I saw a tweet today saying that in 2020, maybe we should bring back "hobbies" - things that we do for pleasure, and that's it. Why not?
Maybe it will be another two years before I make another post. Maybe it will be ten. Maybe it will be two days. The point is that it doesn't matter. I'm doing something that I enjoy doing, and that's enough. I would encourage anyone else to do the same. The world feels like it's on fire. A lot of the times, it literally is on fire these days. It can be overwhelming. So, help out however you can. Schedule your worry. And find the things that make you happy, and do them free of guilt.
