Welcome to the blog, on Ghost
Friday, December 20, 2024
In the spirit of the tumult that is this time of year, and to get a running start into 2025, I’ve moved the blog to Ghost. If you signed up for this on Substack or micro.blog, you’re getting this as an email from the blog on Ghost. And if you’re fine with that, have a festive holiday season, and as always, thanks for reading!
If you’re not, feel free to unsubscribe.
If you’re curious as to why?
Keep reading.
I’ve been blogging/writing online in some form with varying consistency since 2011. Started with a blog about the work I was doing in Afghanistan (which I’m in the processing of archiving and will have what’s left of that available in the new year sometime), and that got a little bit of traction. Since I was concerned my employer at the time would take exception, and not wanting to be bothered with going through that with someone that paid my bills, I opted for a pseudonym.
That continued into writing for other places about Afghanistan, and then I kind of lost track of what I wanted to be doing as a writer, and didn’t write much of anything for a few years. Except emails. Lots of those happened.
The hiatus was due to a couple of things: fear of failure, and a reluctance to just chart a course and pull on the oars for a while. I get lost in the planning of big things, worry that they won’t end up being anything, and then dismantling them. So it’s that self-fulfilling prophecy of failure through inaction, and that in turn validates the fear, and that in turn…spirals.
Then a couple years ago I opted to make “writer” my main thing. See above: I hadn’t addressed the spiraling, so that didn’t get me to where I’d hoped when I planned it would, but it did end up with my starting to write pretty regularly in the last year or so. However, I hemmed myself in with a variety of ways to not be Dan Smock on the internet, by making a Substack that was sort of under my name, or on micro.blog as smock.blog, for example.
But I’d bought my name as a domain years ago, and had kept it up and running, making a couple of attempts at a “personal” website, and along the way after Tumblr, and Wordpress, and Medium, and Substack, I found Ghost. Which, is where we are now, and will be for the duration.
The team behind Ghost is dedicated to building a content management system (CMS) that isn’t bloated, that makes it possible to build something through newsletters, and allows for patronage for those so inclined to pay for the work I do here. I’ve had a few Ghost sites, and I’ve been publishing everything here before putting it out into other platforms for several months, and so everything I’ve been writing is here, and will be here going forward.
Mainly because I want a space that I can grow in, but that isn’t as crowded as Substack. I have plans for things on Substack, but those are a bit in the future, and for now, I’m focusing on just writing here, honing the craft, and still having a space that’s mine, under my name, where I can do the work I like to do.
What that means for you is a couple things.
- If you want to comment, you’d need to sign in: I like that particular barrier to access, that additional friction. When I push things to Substack, if you’re already there, that works, too, but for the blog, which this is tied to, you’d need to sign into Ghost.
- There are 3 newsletters, which you can sign up for individually, and should show up on your personal portal for sign ups, subscriptions. If not, email me at support@dansmock.com, and I’ll see what I can do to assist:
- Dan Has Blog: daily musings, mutterings, and minutiae
- Dan Has Notes: weekly, either a longer essay or short story (coming in 2025)
- Dan Has News: semi-regular updates on what I’m working on now
I have and will continue to struggle with making choices, second guessing myself as I often do, and there is no guarantee I won’t find something shinier, so thank you for your patience in the moves up, down, and around. This came about because something about establishing this little corner of the internet with my name on it makes me nervous, concerned that no one will find it, but also gives me the sense that for once I’m occupying a space that’s mine. With my name on it.
Hi, I’m Dan. Welcome to whatever this is going to be.
And as always, thanks for reading.