Oops, I did it again.

[Tl;dr my blog is now hosted here at https://analogdreams.zip with a fancy new URL and a new workflow that should (hopefully) allow for reliable/indefinite hosting with minimal maintenance and not disappearing all the time.]

I’m a dirty, no-good, inconsistent, stinking hypocrite.

For all of my preaching that you should have your own website – an online presence and hub that you have control over, that logs a history of your thoughts or work, preserved for many years to come – I’ve been terrible about this. When it comes to my writing, the thing I arguably do more than any other work, good luck finding a backlog of my thoughts and writing anywhere!

Sure, I’ve got my work as a PCWorld Contributor. And while I’ve been terrible at keeping up with new postings to it, I’ve managed to keep StreamGuides up for quite some time now. But my more “personal” writing? My inner thoughts? My own musings that aren’t directly tied to professional output? Where has that been?
Uh, well, that’s a good question. I had a really bad string of luck with blog hosts and website hosting services shutting down and disappearing, WordPress installations destroying themselves, etc. and just never managed to keep a consistent blog location. More recently, I had a Write.as blog of a similar name – and a second one specific to ADHD for some reason that I only ever made 1 post to (??) – both of which I let the custom domains for expire because my hoard of domains started to add up in cost and I wasn’t committed to the project anymore. (I hated the post organization/availability on Write.as and the limited customization both left me feeling trapped in a look that didn’t represent myself and stuck in a completely busted, ugly design that I mistakenly made.)

I’ve had Blogspot and Blogger blogs, countless WordPress (.com and .org) websites, various free hosting sites, GeoCities, Google Sites – nothing has been super unified. One domain has remained consistent (the EposVox.com site – which is now a glorified links paged drowning in 90s/00s website cheese) but the content that used to live on it is long gone.

For a short while this past year, I thought it would be best to just leverage my other websites and online hubs to host my writing. Thoughts that might be relevant to my shop could be put in the Shopify blog for that, and everything else could probably have a home on the forums – with an added element of interactivity and evolving discussion (such as my discussion this spring on feeling like YouTube isn’t for me anymore) or allowing myself room to forgo structure and just rant when it feels right (such as my declaration that Xbox lost me as a customer this fall). I even took to writing such a similar thing on Patreon, as I’m trying to treat it as a free newsletter alternative (newsletters being another tool/service that I’ve fumbled repeatedly for a decade now) when writing about my journey to create my own VHS emulation setup in Resolve.
These ideas had merit, and leveraging these other platforms has advantages.

My forums (still being a platform I own and control) allow for reduced structure, when desired, and more interactivity. With my Xbox post, people seemed to have no problem coming from my social media profiles to read what I wrote – and either made an account to discuss it on the forums, or replied on social media to discuss.
Patreon seems like an acceptable newsletter replacement, given the time and money I’ve wasted on 3 different newsletter services thus far. This helps me save money, keep people in fewer places (albeit without being able to import my newsletter subscribers list to my Patreon free following, heh) and avoid neglecting my Patreon profile.
My shop blog seems like the perfect place to discuss ideas or products specific to my shop. Posts there don’t necessarily warrant interaction, and readers could be more easily funneled to the products I sell there – if they want to buy them.

The problem is… it just doesn’t feel right.

Yes, I know that sounds silly, and it’s arguably just unproductive to say in the first place. But that’s always where my research and introspection starts. With a feeling.

For many reasons, writing blogs has started to become a little more popular online again. People want to share their authentic thoughts, without degrading it through the hot-take culture of social media threads or trying to confine it to the packaging of modern clickbait (or even video essay-style) videos. Game devs, freelance writers, general enthusiasts – we’re seeing more writing being shared online, with people starting new blogs or continuing ones they had started long ago. It’s not a big movement, but it’s traction.
And every time I read someone’s thoughts and enjoy what they had to say (most recently, Joey Schutz’s The Case Against Gameplay Loops, Feedme.design’s PlayStation 2 celebration, this post about the Resident Evil NES demake, and this tech philosophy note File Over App from one of the Obsidian devs) I immediately click to the homepage of the blog to read more of what they’ve written.

When I do that, 9 times out of 10 I’m faced with a pretty solid history of writings and musings, most of them interesting to me. I feel two (primary) feelings: Joy that people are still doing this, with excitement to read more from them – and shame, disappointment.

I feel like a fraud. I’ve been a writer my entire life, personally and professionally, yet what do I ever have to show for it? Scattered articles and broken links? (New band name? Or “title of my sex tape”?)

“Comparison is the thief of joy” (Roosevelt), “Comparison is the death of art” (Mark Twain?) – I know, I know. It’s not really about the comparison, though. I’m not comparing to their writing in skill, time spent, any of it. It’s just a realization that I’ve never really “had my shit together” and a reminder that I need to figure it out.
Something I’m focusing heavily on In 2025 is getting “back to basics” with tech and exploring as much tech (and media) literacy in my work as possible. I want to find every way I can to encourage those who will listen to think more about their relationship with tech (and media), exercise more control over it, engage with it with more intentionality, and to utilize it in ways that produces more meaningful results and results that are preserved for the future.

I’ve not done this, myself. My work has often been fleeting and discarded when inconvenient. Worse yet, I think I’ve come to realize is that “bad feeling” has shown my I’ve treated my writing too much like “content.”

Gross.

It’s easy to forget preservation and sustainability when your written (or verbal, visual, whatever) word has been commoditized into “content” – a tool to convince others to do something or give you money. I don’t want to keep doing that.
I want someone to read a blog post from me, have an interest in what else I wrote, and actually be able to find it and read more. More importantly, I want myself to be able to look back on what I wrote over the years and keep looking through it – without digging through file archives and chasing broken links, hoping Wayback Machine caught it.

As Steph Ango wrote, “Who knows if anyone will want to read them besides me, but future me is enough of an audience to make it worthwhile.”

So this is my new blog. This is hopefully my last (personal) blog. I’ve put a ton of time this week into finding a solution that works for me (I’ll discuss that more soon) and a workflow I can reliably keep coming back to, a result that feels sustainable and low-maintenance, and digging up as much past work that makes sense to post here as possible.
I’ve got over 13 years of random thoughts, musings, and writings. Much of the old stuff (the random game reviews etc.) will not be good. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend diving through it. Back then I was still figuring this whole thing out, figuring myself out. But I want it there for me.

I’ll be adopting the IndieWeb POSSE philosophy – publish on my own site, syndicate elsewhere. There will be scenarios where a blog post makes complete sense as a Patreon/newsletter post, a shop update, or a forum post. That’s fine. Unless I truly believe something isn’t worth posting as a blog post, it will end up here first, then posted to those platforms. And everything will be preserved locally (plus backups) in real files that I can continue opening and reviewing for decades to come.

As far as new blog posts go – I make no promises. Some years I write a post or more per month. Other years, I write twice a year. I tend to obsess over my writing and its presence during the winter months (specifically November through February for some reason) and then lose focus on it during busier months of the year – but I never want to stop writing.

I’ll have musings on tech, sustainability, philosophy, games – and sometimes random shit. I’ve got personal stuff that needs to come out sometimes. Sometimes it’ll be an empty thought, sometimes it’ll just be a poem. But regardless of what form or frequency it takes, it will be my writing. My truth, my essence. My humanity. No ChatGPT, no AI-generated (or assisted) slop. Just me.

Thanks for your patience.