Hellooooooo Internet! Welcome to the (new) Wild West!

If you’ve known me for a while (okay, a Very Long Time), you probably remember that I had a book blog at this very same address. I kept it up for years and talked, often at length, about every book I read – until it started feeling like a job, at which point I quit writing. That was around 2015. I tried to bring it back every so often, but I’d just make a post and then neglect it again. Eventually, I completely faded away into the dregs of social media and (surprisingly recently) stopped paying for hosting, though I kept the domain name.

So if you found this blog, yes, it’s still me. That doesn’t mean this blog will be what it once was. Probably not by a long shot.

You might ask what my intentions are, then. Well, tomorrow, 1/20/25, I’ll be deleting my Facebook and Instagram accounts (along with my Twitter/X accounts, though I haven’t used those in years), and while Bluesky is great, I want to be able to share things I do or find interesting – but on my terms this time. I’m paying for hosting, and I own (rent, really, I guess since I have to pay to renew it every year), so data I don’t publicly share isn’t being collect (nor is yours!), and there will be no ads or affiliate links or subscriptions. Which also explains why I’m eschewing Substack.

I like that people will have to seek me out to find me and that they won’t just arrive here because of an algorithm (at least if I can help it). This is closer to what the internet used to be, and I think we were all better off then. Here, we’re in control, and I like it that way.

As for topics, this won’t be a book blog, so I’m sorry to disappoint you if you’re looking for a revival of what I used to do. Yes, I will probably talk about books, sometimes at length, as I used to do (I’m definitely planning on adding what I’m currently reading to the bottom of at least most posts). In this Wild West version (a reference to the 1990s internet where pretty much anything could go and it was all still decentralized) of Oh wait…I forgot, here are some topics you might run into (or not, as I see fit):

• Books (see?)
• Running! (I tried a running blog at a different domain but gave it up after a couple of posts because I discovered that I didn’t have that much to say about that particular topic, though I usually qualify as obsessed with it.)
• Dogs and cats (I have two dogs and four cats, so there will, at least, be photos.)
• Researched opinions on subjects like the decline of social media and the internet in general, rampant consumerism due to actions of social media corporations and the general trend of capitalism, the food and health industry and how it’s so common for studies about human nutrition and health to be funded “secretly” by corporations trying to make us unhealthy for money.
  • I’ll try as much as I can to stay out of politics, but, at least for now, it’s so intertwined that it’s impossible not to make clear which side I’m on once I start talking about it. That really doesn’t matter so much, though, because if you’re here, vast odds are you know me and know where I stand. Also my deleting Meta and X accounts makes it crystal clear. Moot point. Moving on.
• Whatever the hell else I come up with.

So welcome! I just got this hosting running and WordPress installed, so expect things to look pretty different shortly, once I get to messing with the theme. There’ll be an email subscription option soon if it’s not there already, and the RSS feed should be working now. If you want to find me elsewhere, follow me on Bluesky: @ohwaitiforgot.bsky.social. Palmer has also started his blog over at intothebigempty.com. He writes some pretty cool stuff over there, too.

Bye for now!