Half a decade's worth of dust later.

Over five years have passed since my last entry in here. It feels a bit peculiar that, in spite of all the drastic changes that have transpired in that amount of time, this little achival keepsake of my life has stood frozen in time. Patiently waiting to be rediscovered and dusted off like an old video game cartridge that sifted to the bottom of the stack, ready to be played again.

I'm glad it hasn't gone anywhere, even as I've been all over the place. After all these years of inactivity, it could have fallen victim to a mass pruning by the blogger gods, hackers or spammers, or some other cause of certain death. But it's comforting to finally revisit a familiar dark haven of my own creation, one that still contains such personal significance, and find that it's still very much intact and undisturbed.

I am especially grateful considering how disinterested in the online realm I have become, particularly in the social aspect. My favorite discussion forums I grew up with are either long gone or on the verge of dying. My writing was once very prolific on Livejournal, but only one person I know still uses it, so even contributing to that feels like an especially pointless endeavor. I've got me a tumblr, but it, too, is hard for me to take seriously. I've never had any desire to join in the social networking craze; in fact, it's only made me want to socially regress toward the halcyon days of yore when I and everyone around me was perfectly content to never be tethered to a cell phone.

Besides, so few can even be bothered to send an e-mail or a letter these days, or sometimes even respond to a note, or a text that says something along the lines of "hey, I'm still alive, are you?" The general lapse in communication even amongst old friends has been largely disappointing, even though I'm sure my greatly diminished internet presence may have something to do with it. But, my phone number and e-mail have been exactly the same for years, so I'm still trying to come to terms with the scarcity of others, how much is real and how much is imagined, and whether I should ever take any of it personally or if it's just happening to most of us.

Actually, I've been craving for a quiet, cozy space to write like I used to, expressing thoughts and ideas in proper English with greater than 140 characters per post. I would very much like to publish using my allegedly antiquated desktop computing device and similarly old-fashioned indifference toward likes, feeds, and followers. Yet, at this point, I'm beyond starting over from scratch with another new blog, and just writing paragraphs into word files and saving them isn't as satisfying, for some reason.

So in a way, this very blog of mine and my photo gallery feel like the last surviving online holdouts that bear any real meaning for me. I feel strongly compelled to cease neglecting either of them. Just as I end up with thousands of new photographs I've taken every year, I also have novels worth of material I could write about, mostly life experiences, observations, and musings. It's just a matter of setting aside the time and getting back into the habit of writing many of them down as I used to do.

Here's hoping. Toodles.