Fresh start, or why I have a new blog

That's what he called it: a fresh start.

No content imports, no granular URL controls, no markdown. My new blogging software's creator was patiently explaining some of the limitations of the platform in this early iteration. Scribbles, a refreshing new take on hosted-but-indie blogging, is what you're looking at right now if you're visiting on the web rather than via RSS. I didn't have the heart to ask him about search, additional text formatting, image galleries, or email newsletter support—I already know the answer.

"Am I selling it yet? 😅," he asked me.

Yes, Vincent, you are.

Because here's the thing: I'm busy. Not in a hustle-culture-bullshit way, just in the sense that I have better things to do with my time than play fetch with a GitHub workflow every time I want to share some writing. I do enough of that at work.

So instead, I'm here. Taking Vincent "fresh start" Ritter up on his generous offer to let me try his new blog thing early in exchange for...well, nothing actually. After watching the project evolve for a few months, I finally worked up the gumption to email him and ask for a tire to kick. He was gracious enough to indulge me, and boy, this whole "no imports, fresh start!" pitch sure sounds familiar...

Except I intend to do more than just kick the tires, because the truth is I've been missing this. And in the same way the right camera can, sometimes, unblock the photographic process, so too can a change in blog platform get the posts flowing again. Ask me how I know.

The trouble is...no imports means that whole audience, modest as it was, that I built up over on my other domain? Yeah, that's not coming along for the ride. Alright, I can take my own advice. But then what?

Well, for one thing, I can make you open a bunch of other tabs while reading this piece just to really drive home the point that I have another blog, friends, this isn't my first rodeo I'm legit I swear!

I'll cut that out now. It's my way of coping with the fact that a fresh start means each read has to be earned. Again.

I think I knew that's what it would take. Part of me, at least. And I've been putting it off for a long while, hanging on to this notion that, somehow and for some reason, I had to keep hauling the anchor of my past web presences along. But I don't (and neither do you, by the way). The internet's a big place. We can carve out more than one spot, host more than one station, venture in more than one direction. 

I don't know why it's taken me so long to embrace that.