I used to hate writing when I was younger, even if I was typing it. I always thought maybe I’d go into radio or talk, because I liked to talk about things. But when real life sort of shut down my willingness to speak to just anyone, I turned to writing as a way of articulating what I want to say in a format easier for people to ignore. I ran a few blogs on places like Blogspot and my own website, but Livejournal was the longest-running continuously-updating journal for about eight years, before I began to host my own using WordPress. Unfortunately, given the time period, a lot of it was way-too emotionally charged, to the point that keeping it around would be both embarrassing and unprofessional at this point in life. I archived and removed it around the start of my WP blogs in 2009 and 2010.

Part of why I formed the Dumptruck Project, my current iteration of non-themed personal blogs, is that I have had a difficult time trying to come up with a way of balancing out my desire to write about topical interests, and personal things about my life. I’ve had personal blogs before, but they, like my old Livejournal, captured a lot of anger and resentment over the things life dealt me at the time. I had a difficult time processing many feelings, and would pretty much shoot myself in the foot with things I wrote in there that shouldn’t have been in there. I reformatted blog.zerosubspace.com shortly before being laid off from my last job and tried to refocus it as a tech-themed blog, but it’s hardly updated, and instead languishes around until I can figure out how I want to address it. Dumptruck was a catch-all idea I formed last year to try to run a blog that offers a more balanced approach to personal posts, and serve as a place to offer other writings for things like music, movies, TV, culture, and politics. So far, it’s been fairly okay. I challenge myself to write less and focus more on each paragraph of content rather than trying to shove three thousand words down the pipe without any clear meaning.

I’ve never considered myself to be that especially good of a writer. Even when I had to write papers for school, teachers would tell me what I write wasn’t on topic, or didn’t make sense. I graduated with a 2-2.5GPA, so it’s not like I am especially gifted in any way. Yet people often tell me I write very well, especially people at work who read my business emails. Maybe it is the words I use, or maybe it is because I am strict about using formalities like “I apologize for the inconvenience” when addressing client issues. I’ve always felt that if it were me on the other side, I’d appreciate someone taking the time to craft a personalized, non-template email to address my concerns and offer a resolution. I hardly form-fill anything out at work, I type every email out by hand, every greeting, and ever salutation. I type “Thank you and have a great day/night/weekend/holiday” at the end. So I am proud that people see what I do and like what I do, but I am left wondering why more people don’t? I don’t think I am that far ahead of anyone else who graduated high school. Maybe it is my attention to detail that separates me from others?

It is a level of detail I bring to this blog, to all of my blogs. Be it I complain about cartoons, video games, installing Steam on Linux, or government shutdowns, I try to bring something that people will read, even if they don’t reply, acknowledge me, or in any way care. I’ve always written for myself first and foremost. I believe that if it doesn’t pass my own standard, it isn’t worth publishing. Of course, I do want others to read it, because I wouldn’t be doing this otherwise, but I’m not going to plaster myself out everywhere for it. It’s not that important.