Thoughts on blogging

Now, as I test out Movable Type v.4.1 for the first time, I can not help but think about what the interface looked like when I first used it, and how writing that first post felt. Blogging was pretty well-established by 2003, but it was new to me and it was with the encouragement of my brother that I started to run with it.

Back then I was living in a far away land, and the blog started to serve as a lifeline back to family and friends, allowing us to stay in touch, even though we were on different sleep cycles. Now, it still serves that purpose, though it does not occupy as much of my time. Life just doesn't seem as fast-paced and adventure no longer lurks just around a bend in the road over here. I almost feel as if I am living in a retirement community, and I am in a sense. Just under two years ago, I was teaching in one of the worst schools in Osaka during the day, out in the big city at night, and constantly exploring strange and foreign sub-cultures and worlds. There was a lot of stuff for me to share.

I probably would not have been as involved in writing or, for that matter, taking pictures as much as I do had it not been for Justin keeping this domain up and running, and that would have been unfortunate. Sometimes, when I feel like I'm forgetting my life in Japan, I look through the archives and everything comes back. My posts are a hedge against dementia, a touchstone to the past.

I am fascinated by Justin's efforts to keep the architecture of our blogs up to date. Whenever I take a look at the various templates, lines of code to make CAPTCHA or Analytics work, or any of the other moving parts that are hidden under the hood my eyes glaze over and my brain protests against trying to make sense of it all. I, the slacker, much prefer to focus on the content rather than the infrastructure.

I have a hunch that he does not like dealing with the installations - like is not quite the right word. I think he gets a satisfaction of learning how to use all of the tools to keep our blogs running smoothly and up to date, and it wouldn't surprise me if the process of staying on top of these things is one of his forms of meditation.

Given the choice between learning Movable Type from scratch and blogging on something that attracts some of the best features as a result of being open source or subscribing to a service like Blogger and not learning anything more than I needed to, I probably would have gone the Blogger route. I'm glad I didn't though, as I really like posting things here.