It’s amazing how quickly the mind jumps from one thought to something only tangentially related to something else tangentially related to that. In the span of a few minutes, I went from thinking about the vast wasteland ruins of the internet to starting a literary journal in 1996 to my long-standing interest in building things (organizations, concepts, coalitions as opposed to physical things) to the types of video games I used to play.
I began by thinking about that old theme of mine – purpose. Why have a public blog? Why write? Why put any time “here”? I’m quite late to the game of blogging. Most people have abandoned blogs and writing for the more visual and short form platforms of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I know I am a bit of a dinosaur who prefers longer form… Many years ago when I worked in publishing I had thought about reviewing books on a blog I was starting. It was called Booksmatter by Matt S. Booker. It felt clever at the time, Books Matter or Book Smatter…. get it? I was far more pleased with the concept than I was the execution. This happens a lot. I’ve probably registered close to twenty different domain names over the years. This site, TurtleSloth, ridiculous as it is, is the furthest I’ve taken anything. For Booksmatter, I don’t think I ever got around to reading and reviewing a book – just an introduction of the concept. I like introductions and good beginnings – the outline of plan, the world of possibilities. I think our desire to create is one of the more interesting aspects of human nature. I have to imagine that there are thousands of abandoned blogs on the net – each with unique intentions, each a spark, a thought, an attempt at something outside of the self, a legacy of sorts. I think of them as a type of ruins that might be fun to explore (and yes, I just registered the domain name digitalspelunker.com with the thought of exploring and sharing old and abandoned blogs).
Jump: the concept of exploring old blogs made me think of urban exploring, and thinking of cities triggered the recollection of GeoCities – one of the early free hosting sites for the net. I had a GeoCities page for the literary journal I started when I was in college. We only published two issues, and I was in the process of signing a distribution deal when I had to shut it down. Because I knew nothing about starting a business and charged the entire project on my credit cards, I was running out of money. And for various other reasons (school, work, girlfriend, and a poetry editor who moved out of the country) I was running out of steam. The journal was being sold in Borders Books in a few cities (San Francisco, New York, Philly, Chicago, Boston) – or more accurately was being displayed in those cities – very few copies sold. To create a web presence (this was in the early days – 1996 and 1997), I taught myself HTML coding and built a website. The background looked like light-colored wood paneling. The title font was red, and I think I toyed with the idea of, but shied away from, using multi-colored rules (thin horizontal lines used to break up content). All awful design choices (which seemed the norm in the 90s net). I remember the under construction gifs and the flame gifs that so many of those GeoCities sites used. And sometimes they used a flaming under construction image…
That was hot (cringe)!
Aside from a few hard copies of the journal and photocopies of the reviews we received, there are no traces of my first foray into publishing and literature and building something.
Jump: For as long as I can remember I’ve had a touch of an entrepreneurial spirit. As a little kid, I did the lemonade stand thing and as a pre-teen, I would wash cars for money. As a car washer, I had a few regular customers. I tracked my earnings and expenses (sponges and soap) in a notebook. After a few weeks of washing cars, I upgraded the business with a capital investment – I bought the turbo-wash hose extension. By reducing the time spent on each car, I could take on more clients. I think that business lasted two summers…
Half-jump: I can also remember that I was always attracted to games that simulated commerce or building things: cities, civilizations, race tracks, space stations, amusement parks. I never got into the heavy action games or shooter games – instead, I was interested in simulations and management. I remember a Commodore 64 video game called Racing Destruction Set – in it you’d build race tracks with various obstacles and turns and jumps and then race cars on it. I was always more interested in building the race course than doing the actual racing. From there I moved on to games like Project Space Station (build a space station and conduct research), Aerobiz (run an airline), Sim City (build a city), Civilization (rule the world), Capitalism II (corner the market on everything), and Casino Empire (build an empire, break a few kneecaps)…. To me, these were all puzzles to be solved, equations to be manipulated and improved on. Increase x, decrease y, adjust these expenditures, set those priorities. Each game, I could try new variations… and if it wasn’t working, there was always the restart. Admittedly, unlike in real life, the stakes were low.
I am, at heart, a builder and a mental tinkerer. I approach work and relationships and writing as creative and evolutionary processes of building, studying others, tearing down, using scraps, rebuilding, and a little dreaming. I sometimes struggle with being in the moment, because, like a lot of people, I want there to be some sort of meaning to how I spend my time and what I build. At the same time, I recognize how limiting and stifling that can be – how if I’m always working towards something, I may not be spending enough time in the now. This usually manifests itself in the form of writer’s block or not painting or not taking a chance. There’s an odd irony in striving to be purposefully without purpose. It’s hard to sit down and write or paint for the sake of writing or painting (without worrying about whether it’s any good or of any use to someone else) – and it can be discomforting to accept that the site, the individual, the project, the relationship is always under construction and sometimes for no other reason than to see how the pieces fit together.