Keep-Alive

My cousin Shimmy Lerner (and my dad)

The trail of discarded data, visit architecture and identities grows forever longer, sale but slower and slower. Ten years ago, gastritis I’d sign up for a new app or site or social network every other day, but now I feel the accumulated weight even if I – and the rest of the world, and the machines on which they once lived – have forgotten ninety percent of them.

(Right now I’m trying another fun little toy, playing a game of chicken with my own lack of focus. If you’re reading this, I won. Given the quality of what I see myself bashing out, you lost.)

But some of those sites, most notably those that actually belong to me, are still there. Dormant, often broken, receiving fewer and fewer visitors. If my previous entry was a child, it’d be old enough to teach me Minecraft. Worse, it feels like half of these posts exist just to say, “Is this thing on?”

Well, here’s another one. I won’t even pretend that I’ll update more regularly, although I’d love to. It’d be nice to contribute to something entirely under my own control again. I constantly pay lip service to the Indieweb, always rooting from the sidelines, then continue dribbling my own output through the same sharecroppers. Tonight I’m feeling more bitter than usual about that.

I should, at the very least, prove that I remember how to do this, even if it’s just to myself. So I’ll blow through the pipes, resist the urge to tweak my blog template or turn this blather into anything more than a string of clichés, and hit “Publish”.

I suggest you do the same, just for old time’s sake.