Well, October did not go as planned and now it is the middle of November. If I was aiming for consistency, I failed.

The question is: what now?

There is a sunk cost fallacy in having a blog these days. I have invested time and energy into this. Why? What is the point? Do I continue a project just because I have already committed resources? I am not trying to sell you something. I don’t expect to earn revenue (not opposed to it, but that is not my current focus). Even as I eschew advertising, I find that so much of my online life is inexorably connected to it. Social media (even Mastodon) too often feels like a way of selling self. Am I different? I post stories and poems here because I want you to read. I am starting new accounts on some other writing sites to do the same. Obviously, a part of this is about putting myself out there. I want to be seen. If I didn’t, I’d still be writing privately.

I posted on Mastodon about realizing that I was feeling more isolated than usual especially when it came to my values and ideas surrounding sex and relationships. In a response, I said that finding your crowd important. That is true, but I don’t think you find your crowd by standing up one day and saying, “I am going to find my crowd.” The focus is flawed. You are not focusing on the things you value and enjoy, you are focusing on the crowd. You spend more time chasing connection instead of actually doing the things you want to do.

Community is built through action. Since I am, first and foremost, a figment of text, I will use that as the locus of my example. We can think of community as a shared reflection, creation, and circulation of text (there is a whole avenue of research on this, but I will spare you citations – for now). It is not a passive accumulation of text, nor is it only a creation of text. It is the movement, the engagement with the texts of the community that helps make you a part of it. That is why we write blogs and posts even if we are not selling something. We are engaging with the texts. We are claiming a place in the community¹.

Maybe that is what I am doing. For so much of my life, I have been on the fringes, a passive (and safe) observer. I think that was to my detriment, but I had a lot of shit to work through (don’t we all). So now, older and make a little less wise, I choose to engage. How? Well, I am obviously still figuring that out. I write and I research. I am good at it (or so I think). So that is where I start. I write, and sometimes that writing slows down because life gets in the way.

But hey, I may be older, but I’m not dead. So I still keep on keeping on. I hope you do, too.