It’s been a full year since I’ve put pen to paper and blogged here. I’ve thought about coming back a few times over the past dozen months, but never pulled the trigger. However, I feel like it’s finally time to get back to blogging.

I used to be a regular blogger, and for a couple years I even daily blogged. Then with the rise of various social media platforms, I ended up doing more interactions and sharing of thoughts over on those spaces, and the blog slowly declined into a couple dozen posts per year.

However, something that we’ve all been learning over the past couple years is that social media platforms are not all that they’re cracked up to be. Never mind the machinations about perceived vs real “connection”, the mere fact that YOU are the product on social media platforms begets its own problems. The only way for these platforms to make money is to keep you engaged with them as long as possible and so through combinations of algorithms and increasingly deceptive AI practices, they do whatever they can to get you to never leave their walled garden. That results in you not actually not engaging with the connections you actually want to engage with but just mindlessly scrolling random whatever that the machine decides to feed you.

That’s enough ranting for the moment though (I’ll come back to more thoughts on social media in another post), as the purpose of this post is actually to talk about my return to blogging.

I’ve missed having the discipline to sit down and do more mid-to-long form writing and musings, as well as taking the time to share my thoughts and opinions on things I encounter and use in life. One of the things that I really enjoy writing are product and experience (ie. race reports) reviews as it allows me to share my thoughts on things that have brought value to my life, and honestly give feedback about why they have meaning to me. Some of the most impactful posts on this blog have been my overviews of things like bicycles and shoes, as well as race/adventure reports in various locations. I hope to be able to do more of that in the future in this space.

I use the word discipline because taking the time to create, whether in written word, music, or audio/visual mediums, requires intentionality and purpose to avoid the distractions that modern life throws at us. As an example, I’ve recently started playing music again, sometimes with other people. If I want to enjoy myself and not embarrass myself, I need to practice and take the time to learn and grow. Having a lot of musical experience in my background will only get me so far. I need to exercise the muscles, both physically and creatively. Growth begets growth, and that practice requires the discipline to commit to putting in the effort.

As we enter into this new year (perhaps you can call it a resolution), I want to strive to be more disciplined in putting my time and effort towards things that give me joy and fill my days with meaning and beauty. I look forward to this fresh start of sharing those experiences with all of you.

I will try to cross post things to social media platforms as I remember, but if you want to make sure you don’t miss out, click the subscribe button and you’ll get my missives in your inbox as I create them. You can also follow me on the various social platforms linked in the sidebar.

Cheers to a new and exciting 2025!