Today, I welcome myself back to my own blog. Hi, I’m Aaron, the titular note taker. I’ve had this website for many years, and used to update it with some regularity. The content and consistency of the website changed from time to time, but more or less functioned as a personal blog. Some years into that and some years back from now, I don’t recall how many, I became extremely burnt out and overwhelmed in my job and various aspects of my personal life. My mid-to-late 30s were pretty rough. During that burn-out period, my posts here become less and less frequent. Due to some extremely lackluster attention and follow through, I also had a bunch of half-written blogs that I hadn’t meant to go up end up publishing anyway. At some point, I realized just how little I was doing with this and then scrapped it all. Well, scrapped most of it, anyway. I not only stopped posting, I also cleared out the back posts, leaving up a placeholder for a while. I’ve now scrapped that.
I’m in my early 40s now, and once again have the urge to share what is going on in my life. I also have regained that old urge to write. Reviving my old blog seems like the natural course of action to satisfy both. I should give fair warning to anyone who somehow found their way here that I don’t have any real expectations for what this will be, how frequently I’ll update it, or even if I will keep it up at all. That’s the gist of it – I’m planning to start writing again, including here, and this is the first post towards that.
I’m in a bit of a transition period in my life, you see. I’ve had some changes, some by choice and some not, and I’m feeling introspective. More so than usual. I’ve also been sitting on some additional changes that I want to make but haven’t, some I’ve been sitting on for quite some time. Odd they haven’t hatched on their own… annoying that bit. I do journal personally, fairly regularly, but there is a part of me that wants to commit to the structure, rigor, and practice that writing to an audience (even just a perceived if not actually present one) has on one’s related skills. Before I move on, I should address the weight of the words at the first part of this paragraph – it’s nothing massive, world changing, person changing. Well, I don’t think so. It’s more stuff I’ve been doing or planning to do, like getting in shape, engaging my existing and underused skills, and picking up new ones. Plus just working on the whole me of it all. Like to be a (slightly) less shitty person. Not that I’m all that terribly shitty, in fact I think most people would say I’m quite nice. I think.
Also I was hospitalized at the start of 2024 and slightly died and haven’t fully recovered. And probably won’t. But I’m up and moving around again, so you know, that’s good.
The plan, at least for the time being, is to pop in here as appropriate with the things that are on my mind. You know, a blog. Remember those?
Lately, the things on my mind have been a bit too much to keep up with. So I’m hoping that, in part, this can act as a somewhat therapeutic exercise. Maybe a way to jot down something that’s bothering or exciting me, get it out of my head and let it live somewhere else for a while. I also want to use the blog as a bit of an academic booster, as I’ve been trying to play catch-up on my education and skill acquisition. I’m not sure exactly what form that will take, though right now I’m thinking I might occasionally use this as a sort of review of whatever I’m trying to learn at the moment. I’m also looking for something to be a quasi formal record of my current and previous efforts during this time, my struggles, strategies, and successes on various issues, such as my health and fitness. Lastly, one of the original focuses I had planned but rarely actually indulged in, was to talk about some of my hobbies, interests, passions… look, I’m into a lot of shit. Dumb shit, mostly, but that don’t bother me none. I like to tinker and screw around with stuff. I’m fascinated by the world and how it works. I like to try new experiences and I love to make things. And I need a place to talk about them, sometimes very briefly and other times at nauseating length. So you know, blog.
Some of these areas of interest are ongoing threats, which gives me the notion to set up a sort of schedule or likely something less formal, but some expectation to have semi-regular check-ins. Maybe more, but for now, let’s just say that’s what is likely to appear here, assuming anything else appears here ever again. Well, wouldn’t you know, it’s the first post in a very long time and it’s already longer than I’d intended. Sounds like I’m right back to my same old shit, yee-haw. Oh well, at least it’s relatively coherent this time.
Anyway, here’s a picture I drew of a thing I found that, now that I’m looking at it again, does look a lot more like a dick than I’d first thought. For reference, it was slightly larger than key size. I’m pretty sure it was a bottle opener. You can see it, right? Right?
I suppose it could have been a weird key. But, I mean, look at it.