Consistency in practice (Write weekly)
Be generous with ourselves (5 sick days)
A post has meaning even if no one is there to read it (write for yourself)
Loney:
One day you came up to me and you told me that 2025 was the Year of the Blog and then you repeated it two more times so I believed you. But I still wanted to know what it was.
M:
When I said it I wasn't sure, except that I wanted it to happen and I wanted it to happen with you. It was through our conversations that I figured out what the impulse was.
L:
... and what is it?
M:
Carving out a space on the internet that is just for us but also for whoever might find their way there. Michael Chabon wrote a piece once about books being light houses and I think of it a bit like that. A light house is complete in itself, it doesn't require a like or a share to be a light-house but sometimes, it finds a friend who is out wandering.
L:
I like the serendipity factor here: by writing online, we're opening outselves up to conection without pushing it towards our friends. Blogging is intimate in it's obscurity. Like... wandering through a forest. Not all public property is easy to find.
M:
I am very ready to spend more time with your words. I often wish I had a rewind button for our conversations. When we first talked you said something I'm still thinking about which was your desire to "be impressed upon, to be influenced" and choosing to be influenced is a powerful act. We are choosing what to feed ourselves.
We have a lot of chats but in this case I'm less interested in having a conversation than in thinking side by side. Not quite epistolary but connected. I want to get to watch you do your thing and have that make me question mine.
L:
This is a cool counter-practice to posting on social media. I'm thinking today of this quote by Alexis Pauline Gumbs "is social media already a technology of bounce, of throwing something out there and seeing what comes back?" which is a really cool way of thinking about how and why we post online. That said, it's not what I want when I'm trying to publish.
M:
So what do you want from this experience?
L:
Honestly, to find my center outside of "bounce." I spend a lot of time thinking about if I "have anything to say" or if I'm the "right person" to say it. That is all time I could be spending more deeply investigating myself, my context, and what it is I actually want to say! The world is changing and so am I. I want to keep honing my presence and center and bring that to the way I bounce off of other people. What do you want to get from this experience?
M:
I find writing a way of shaping thought. And writing in public as a way of sharpening thought. I write in a journal, but that is more emotional triage than anything else. Ultimately, I want to bring clarity to my relationship with the world and the things I care about.