Once more, unto the breach…

…”dear friends, once more…” I haven’t posted here since the second week of January in 2022, which was also the week I received my first Covid vaccination. You would think that being retired and house-bound by a pandemic would afford ample opportunities to get some writing done, but hard times are not always the best crucible for creativity, despite what you hear. And I was pouring a lot of effort into my then-new podcast, which easily absorbed all of my free time and creative energy. No complaints about that, but I had little left in the tank for the written word, not even for the Hot Stove Herping posts, heavy with thrill and chill but light on research and thoughtful musing.

I’ve missed writing about herps, herpetology, and field herping. I started journaling field herping trips back in 1996, just before the term blog was invented and the blogosphere was a thing (“weblog” was coined in 1997, and “blog” came along in 1999). This was also before hosted blog platforms like Blogspot and LiveJournal (1999), and before WordPress and other useful tools came along. I would write HTML code by hand to build the journal page, and then add the blog text, and as there were no digital cameras back then, I would run photos through a scanner and then link them in. I would then use FTP to push the new journal post up to the server and finish the process.

My point behind all this old-guy reminiscing is that back then, you had to really want it. You had to be completely invested in getting your words out there. I put a lot of time and effort into that work and incredibly, there were people that read my journal entries, and some would actually respond. It was an amazing experience that still resonates with me. All that toil was totally worth it. These days it’s ridiculously easy to crank out these journal entries and essays, with so many barriers and excuses removed. All that’s left is the thinkin’ and the writin’, and how hard could that be? I admire the old explorers and naturalists who kept journals written by lantern light with the simple tools of paper and pen. They are the forbears of us nature bloggers, and the modern nature journalists too, whom I also appreciate. I’m not much of an artist, so I have to bring other tools to bear on my experiences.

I still want to do it. And I still think it’s worth it, even if the audience is small, or not there at all. Writing in itself is its own reward (no, really) and I’ve been itching to return to the blog format almost as soon as I left it. In dribs and drabs, people are returning to the Small Web concept, turning their backs on the sadness of social media, and picking up their rusty tools to make stuff once again. Building little web pages about their interests, and writing blog posts. And why not? Twitter is a raging house fire tended by fascists and Nazis, FaceBook is bloated under the weight of surveillance capitalism, and an AI leech that nobody asked for, or wants. Et cetera. Federated platforms aside, social media suffers much from enshittification at the hands of the broligarchs, and I participate just enough to keep in touch – that’s about all I can handle these days. I want, and I need, something deeper, with more meaning, and independent of the shallow emoticon response and reward.

The year 2025 isn’t much better than Peak Covid, but still, why not blog? It certainly cuts into your doom scrolling time. With blogging, there’s no AI, no ads, no surveillance capitalism, no persona-driven shallowness, no algorithmic consequences, and best of all, no ever-tightening spiral of relevancy. Just words and images. I’m ready to write about herps again, and I have plenty of material – I mean what’s the point of 20,000 images hidden from view on my hard drive, and decades of experiences tucked safely inside my skull? One awkward step off the curb and it’s like none of it ever happened. And so I’m committed to work this project back into my already overloaded schedule. I’m already queueing up some short posts to support some of my podcast episodes, just to expand a little on the themes within, and some backstory that might be of interest – I see a gap to exploit there. At any rate, it’s time to get back on the horse.

Thanks for reading this. And if you can, read it on a big screen or a tablet. All those big and beautiful images squished into a phone turned sideways makes me sad.

Mike