I started this blog over six years ago and, as it stands, it serves as a landing page for everything someone who wants to know more about me can use.

But there’s a weird feeling in my gut. Blogging, by its existence now in the year 2024, is a niche hobby. Something only few of us do when compared to the cultural juggernauts of “popular social media sites.” There, you get everything you need in one, tight, discombobulated, algorithm-bound timeline.

I feel like I missed something.

Like, there was a whole world of internet culture where you didn’t hop on to check social media. You hopped on and rolled from one site to the next, checking in on friends and people who you admired, tumbling from one to the next (hence where the site “Tumblr” came from before it, too, mostly perished from the public sphere). Colleen Doran, amazing artist, talks about the pressures of writing that much over on her Substack. She said:

Do I want to blog two or three times a day? What would I even talk about?

Twitter exploded in a hail of fire, brimstone, and stupid choices. I like Bluesksy and am tolerating Threads. I guess I’d like a place to post thoughts longer than what would be suited for character count-limited space. A place where I could share some quick thoughts on the most recent Commander Bans in Magic the Gathering or how I feel about the new Sonic the Hedgehog movie coming out…

…and then I remembered I have this space.

Maybe they’ll be ill-formed, half-sparsed thoughts, but it’s my space. This is my online notebook, after all, and what is a notebook if not a space to put things you don’t mind being a little wonky? Take this as a warning, I guess. There won’t always be featured images, either. Sorry. I know pictures and video are the way to go, but there needs to be as short a distance as possible between “thought” and “action” and picking up my phone to upload an image I think works with a post is just too much sometimes.

STATUS will still be the typical blog of choice, and Fifth Draft is where I’ll post what I learned about writing (when I get the time to write something that well thought out), and Break It Down is where I talk about stories that are not my own. The Online Notebook tab is the most ubiquitous, so expect that one the most.

I am sorry, in advance.

Thanks for reading,

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Threads: @RobAcosta

BlueSky: @robacosta.bsky.social

Instagram: @robacosta

E-mail: robertmichaelacosta@gmail.com