Having a blog has felt pointless for a couple decades now. Bringing readers to a web page is akin to trying to capture attention with a small sign on a street corner in midtown Manhattan. Everybody is jaded and even clickbait fails to draw clicks. The Internet feels post-apocalyptic, with swarms of bots clicking on AI generated webpages. Content viewership is even determined by computers, not humans. Algorithms create comfortable, individualized echo chambers, one per person, to be sure users aren’t so mentally challenged that they leave the site and stop viewing ads.

So why blog?

• It seems more and more important to have unmonetized, human-generated content on the Internet.
• I need to start creating again as an antidote to consuming.
• Sharing my return to more active Buddhist practice might help someone else along their own path.
• To find my own voice again, by writing with no feedback from comments or linkbacks.

Who am I?

I’m a GenX netizen who has watched the Internet grow from the ground up. I’m a bioinformatician and computational biologist in my day job. Outside work I have an ever-changing panoply of hobbies and interests, some of which may appear at various times on this blog. They have included Irish music, fountain pens, and fiber arts, but are subject to change on a whim.

My Sōtō Zen practice is in the lineage of the White Plum Asanga, founded by Maezumi Roshi and Bernie Glassman.