Like an old and broken pickup truck, this blog mostly just sits on blocks. Bits and bytes weather the elements, one season to the next, while the odds its engine will turn over decay each day.
But the batteries — if you’ll indulge my metaphor — apparently still hold a charge, and from time to time I do manage to take this thing out for a spin. It rarely lasts.
Nevertheless, I’m tinkering under the hood, again. The CMS engine is sputtering in fits and starts as I flush the bit-rot and rebuild the broken pieces: crufty MovableType backups, a half-busted Tumblr migration, ancient Blogger exports, inconsistently-applied Markdown syntax. It’s a strange return to a bunch of unfashionably-longform posts written in a voice that’s familiar, but definitely not mine, not me, not anymore.
Still, it’s a labor of love. And behind lock and key of a [ LOG IN ] link, I’ve finally managed to un-archive and republish a hundred-odd private posts I wrote for friends and family when our first child was born abroad. The archived timestamps remain accurate to the minute, but damn if it doesn’t all just feel so long ago when I read those posts now.
Anyhow. A decade of parenting provides enough wry perspective to know how niche the readership for such material is — but it was a much-needed connection to family, then, and there’s two precious kids reading those posts for the first time, now, and I reckon that’s all the audience that really matters.
But enough of the past, neh?
I’ve got the engine running. And the weather suddenly feels right for writing. We have Big Travel back on our itinerary, after so many years, and I can’t wait — our little family’s about to hit the road for a good stretch.
Let’s see if this old blog can do the same.
