Scope

Assemble all my written words into machine-readable foundation for future content creation and re-weaving of past writing into coherent narrative that paves the way for sharing and showing history of thought.

Oh great, just what I needed, another project!

Reasoning

As I wrote about in March, I’ve been building and destroying this website in iterative cycles for decades, and I’m ripe for another go ’round soon. So I started testing out new platforms and aggregating all the content that’s been missing around here for a while (sorry!).

Though since writing that, I’ve been reconsidering the writings beyond this humble blog:

• What about all that I’ve written for my dozens of other websites, most of which have come and gone?
• What about all the long-form things I’ve shared across other platforms, such a magazine articles or social posts that never appeared on any of my websites?
• Or what about the stuff I did share here AND other places in slightly different iterations/variations?
• What about all the transcripts from the podcasts or videos or events I’ve been on?
• What about all the mostly complete drafts or private writings that I’ve never shared at all?
• What about all the lyrics or more poetic words I’ve written and shared as artistic works?

Yeah, I should probably consider all this too.

And then there’s the workflow. How simple and easy could I possibly make it to write, to evaluate, to revise, to publish/maintain and to share out?

Write

What presents as a steady streak of consistency in my writing output is only ever the result of staging workflow. On writing side? Much more messy! And I’ve come to be okay with that. For a years on end, I wrote mostly every day. But not strictly. I prefer adjusting to the ebbs and flows of taking information in, synthesizing it (often through writing), then sharing it out and going quiet for a bit to see what happens. I want to move back to this cadence again with intention, and make writing even easier. When I’m writing, a lot comes out at once! While not all of it is good, I find it’s helpful to get it out even if I believe in the moment it won’t ever be seen by others. Because often that’s where my thinking crystalizes. And some of my best writing is exactly that stuff!

Evaluate

I used to share my own personal life and info very freely… a little too freely for my own good, as it turns out. I went dormant for over a year figuring out where the line is now, and in the future. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology, I have my botfriends to act as filters for what I share going forward. I’ve got a Security Analyst, Webmaster, Psychoanalyst, Writing Coach, and Publicist (all in AI form, of course) working as a team to help me ensure my drafts are actually done from their perspective, and are not opening me up to things that can come back to bite me later.

Revise

Whether revising something that is drafted or previously completed/published, I am making it super simple to go back and fix what needs fixing with a minimum of effort. AI does not write for me, but it does read for me and make editorial suggestions as appropriate. To date, I always edit further, then train the AIs on my edits.

Publish

The publishing platforms I’ve used trace the evolution of the web itself: email newsletters, hand-coded HTML, LiveJournal, Blogger, RSS, WordPress, TypePad, MySpace, Twitter, Facebook Notes, Squarespace, Wix, Medium, Ghost, LinkedIn Articles, YouTube, Instagram, Substack, Buttondown… All of the above and more, always searching. Historically, this has meant perpetually breaking all the links, disappearing content, and orphaning resources! Apologies, I’ll stop doing that.

Share

Who I’m sharing to may be someone reading today, or it may be someone looking back on today from tomorrow. And it’s also for their botfriends, and mine. I’m training my own local Bot Armada to think like me, write like me, and share like me. Some humans are worried about becoming redundant, but I’m all in on making my current self less needed so I’m free to be a better self in the future.

So I want to be as replicable as possible in terms of my thoughts. Because I never actually believed these ideas in my head were mine in the first place, y’know? Since I was a kid, I’ve always found it more useful to treat both thoughts and feelings more like weather that’s just passing through than like a meaningful possession. Yes, my thoughts affect me and the choices I make, but they’re not me and are no more mine than the sun or clouds overhead.

That’s probably why I overshared previously. I wanted to find the others who were seeing the same shapes in the clouds that I am. Or who are looking up at the same stars at night and imagining other ways things could be out there, and maybe even down here.

Key Decisions for this project

1. Yes, it’s in scope. If I wrote it (or said it and it’s been transcribed into text), then it counts. I am declaring my own canon, keeping it local and private by default, while holding the intention of sharing everything under the sun with my own bots and most of it with fellow humans and their bots via the clouds eventually.
2. This leap is Sam’s final leap home (hey look, a Quantum Leap reference!). For as long as there is an internet and I have my own little corner of it, I want this site to work. Unless there’s a damn good reason to make an exception, all content that goes up, stays up, and without future alteration to the URLs. I want to refer to my previous works using permalinks still stable 50 years from now.
3. Keeping my writing entirely in markdown at every stage of the workflow such that I can take any piece of writing at any stage and easily revise and evaluate it without having to format anything or fix a single link or image reference. This keeps everything machine readable too and second-brain friendly too. Remember, I’ve been writing about the benefits of plain text since before it was cool.
4. 80% there is good enough to share. I’m not a perfectionist, so why play one on the internet? Most of the things I’ve said over the years I would certainly say differently today. Some things might not need to be said at all. But if it doesn’t open new attack vectors to leave as is, I’ll just leave as is, and share as is.
5. Giving up on the web that was, and weaving the web I want. Every single time there’s a way to share things on the internet that actually works, somebody comes along and breaks it! I hate that, don’t you? Even the open protocols of email and the world wide web are effectively rendered useless when the Colossal MegaPlatforms handle your inbox and search algorithms. So fine, the mainstream may no longer care about standards, but I do (always have!) and I’m not up for playing the next round of The Liking Game thankyouverymuch. For me, it’s all standards all the way, and if the Colossals have all enshittified their MegaPlatforms so much that they don’t like the taste of web standards anymore, then that’s on them. I’m not interested in their games. Things that should be on my blog will have to be invented if they do not exist.
6. I already have what I need and am ready to call this infrastructure good for a long while. While Zola ain’t my favorite of platforms to stand things up on, being that it’s one of the few markdown-friendly AND offline AND cross-platform options, it looks like that’s what I’m doubling down on now. Being a Rust-based static site generator, it suits my philosophy and temperament, at least. I really wish the Quartz 4 idea could have worked out, but it seems to be one of those abandoned github projects now. Too bad, so sad, Zola it is.

Invitation

If you’re interested in further updates as I forge my canon, please let me know.

…Maybe you’d like to do something similar? Oh, I wish you would. Please take this idea & run with it!