During Lent I blogged every day. I can’t imagine I’ll keep up that pace, though that may simply be a failure of imagination on my part. But I do hope the habit of blogging regularly has settled back into my working and dreaming self.

I’ve mentioned before that a return to blogging reawakened my sense of the network as a tool for conviviality, to borrow Illich’s phrase. That’s been a very good thing, as my experience of that conviviality had eroded quite a bit over the years, probably since about 2008–though the erosion was imperceptible at first. Blogging, reading, linking, commenting–not branding or gathering the tribe, but conversing–these are nourishing things.

Eugene Eric Kim undertook a similar season of blogging last year, and his delightful blog post appeared in my revitalized network this year. My learnings are much like his. More conviviality there; thank you, Eric.

I’m also feeling more prepared to dive back into my work on Doug Engelbart, and hope to restart the Framework interview series over the next few weeks. I’ve got some great interviews “in the can,” so to speak, and I have some ideas about more interviews … so there will be more on the way in that area, I hope.

And last but by no means least, I’ve felt more connected to my earlier self, my pre-pandemic and my pre-exile self. As I work with students, I find myself googling phrases I could dimly remember like “the perfume of an idea” (apt meta-experience, there) and rediscovering long, thoughtful posts some Gardo fellow had cast onto the waters many years ago. Not a bad chap. He did okay. I’ve even begun clicking on the algorithmically generated “related posts” that show up beneath my new posts, and been surprised by the connections between then and now. Surprised, and sometimes dismayed as well … it’s discouraging to see those places where not much has changed, aside from people become even more entrenched and loud in their various Positions.

But all in all, it is good to be reacquainted: with blogging, with steady writing, with friends on the network and what they have to say. With myself.

So, at the conclusion of a new beginning, greetings and felicitations!