I was looking at the time stamps on this site. Yes, it's been a decade and maybe more since I have posted anything here or elsewhere (unless you count my "work" blog, but that is a different story). A lot has changed in that time. My family has grown, and we have experienced joy, loss, sorrow, and hope. I have a few wonderful children here, and many more that I have not met and whom I hope to meet in the hereafter. I have gone through an entire cycle of starting as an assistant professor, earning tenure, and leaving for a new job. I'm now an associate professor at a Catholic university, for what it is worth. The unfortunate rise of generative AI has ruined much of the internet, and while there remain a number of people still writing online, it seems to me that many more have given up.
What brings me back, after all this time? And why here, as opposed to my older more established blogs (or, to creating a new one)? My original blog still exists, but in an un-accessible state. I think I can go in and get the best of my posts form it (I can access the blog's editor), but it is not really accessible to the internet at large anymore. My other project blog--Nicene Guys--is not accessible. I may ask the friend why build the back-end whether he still has the old posts, but I don't have any plans to re-constitute it. And I have considered creating a new blog--it has been a decade, after all, and so revisiting this one seems like an odd choice. I have considered two titles (Passing the Fruits, or After the Chores Are Done). Perhaps I will visit these, and perhaps if I sustain work here, I may transition to those instead.
I've been wanting to take this back up for some time, but the timing hasn't been good. There have been some doubts: will I be able to sustain this, will it really make the world a better place? And what should be the scope? For now, I want to keep the scope relatively limited, mostly short posts to be written with a short time. Let's see where it takes me.
A part of why I am here, hopefully with more regularity, is that my wife has been encouraging me to get back into doing this. It's a sort of self-care, I suppose, but she is much more supportive of my writing again than she was when I stopped. Our family is in a different place, I suppose, and hopefully for the better. Here's to more decades, I suppose.
