I have to con­fess that I’ve tried my hand at blog­ging before.

First time, I jumped in head first with­out a plan nor a goal. I had been work­ing on my own web­site (a pre­cur­sor to this one) in order to improve my web–design skills. As part of the process I hand–coded a CMS in PHP. It began as noth­ing more than a learn­ing exer­cise, but before I knew it the code had some­how mor­phed into a fledg­ling blog.

So it began. I had a web­site, I had a blog. What else was I to do but start post­ing content?

With­out direc­tion I began to con­coct arti­cles regard­ing any and all top­ics on which I could throw together 500 words. I jumped from posts on web design, a topic about which I know very lit­tle, to ill–conceived attempts to pro­mul­gate my opin­ion on the supe­ri­or­ity of Linux over Windows.

In due course my enthu­si­asm for the blog failed and the site became stale. So ended by first attempt at blogging.

Sev­eral years later I found myself inspired by the work of a friend and decided that I should have another crack at blog­ging.  The same site was treated to a redesign, this time using Word­Press and a cus­tomised ver­sion of the won­der­ful Hem­ing­way theme as a basis for the style, and I put together a post­ing plan to keep my efforts on track.

This worked well for me and my posts con­tin­ued to arrive at a daily pace for a month or so. The fre­quency at which con­tent appeared slowed in month two, and again in month three. By the fourth month I found myself unin­spired and unin­ter­ested. Yet again the site grew stale and even­tu­ally died a quiet death. In the words of T. S. Eliot:

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Behind me I have two failed attempts at blog­ging— one of which was entered into with my eyes open— so why then am I try­ing to write a blog for a third time? This is but one of the ques­tions that I intend to explore in the com­ing weeks.

For now, this post is my under­stated return to the blo­gos­phere. As much as I hate the word, I’m excited to be back. Again. (Again again.)

All feed­back and thoughts on any aspect of the site would be grate­fully received. In the mean­time, I’ll try and work on writ­ing some­thing that is worth talk­ing about.