Game Over
Return of Ganon
Wednesday, 2008-03-26 | demongin.org
| " This is the first age that's paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one." |
So, after a two year hiatus, it looks like demongin is back.
And I'm not sure why. But I've got some ideas.
I originally started the project way back in 2004 for three reasons. The whys and wherefores of the first iteration of demongin
First and, initially, foremost, I was still a member of Academia (i.e. in college, i.e. black-out drunk nearly all the time and had way too much time on my hands). And I wanted something in my daily routine that would "keep me sharp."
I had heard, at some point, about how Montaigne (or whomever) had written an essay every day for most of his adult life. "What an excellent way to keep up my compositional abilities while also compiling an inventory of my opinions," I thought.
Secondly, inveterate show-off, blow-hard and braggart that I am, I wanted there to be no doubt among my peers that I was the most precocious, most pernicious and most pedantic person they knew. The thinking was something like this: "every day I'll write one of these hateful, erudite little love essays to myself and, on the off chance someone checks in to see what I've been up to, they will be forced to recognize me as the sort of person who writes an essay every day."
Finally, and, I realize in retrospect, most importantly, the first demongin corresponds (roughly) with the time that I learned that I was to be uprooted from the great state of Chicago and transplanted to Connecticut, a place where I didn't know anybody and didn't want to know anybody. And as I reflect, I am only beginning to realize now that demongin was something "routine" that, unlike my life in the City of Big shoulders, could be transplanted.
I was facing down an imminent reboot of my entire life and I realize that I craved some daily task that I could take with me. demongin was just that.
And for all of its hard-bitten, DIY charm, its dark corners and UI idiosyncrasies, It's still basically just a blog, this demongin, and those are exactly the sort of reasons that people start blogs.
So why am I starting it again? I mean, it's a lot of work--building your own blog framework from scratch to one side, the daily essay component is a fair bit of work in and of itself. And these things are a dime-a-dozen.
The answer isn't particular exciting, daring or revelatory. And that kind of irks me. I think I'm starting it up again because I remember it fondly. The thing I remember most fondly is how I imagined that the deadline enriched the quality of my life.
I learned, during the two years I was doing it, to be constantly summarizing and representing everything that occurred to me (whether in the external sense of an encounter with the world or in the internal sense of a notion that springs to life in one's mind).
I want to start seeing the world through the old lens again. I want to be back behind the old mask.