By Any Other Name
The draft of today's post has been sitting derelict for a while and as I took my sweet time pretending to let the matter percolate, by way of digital morphogenetic field the topic seemed to have blown up somewhat. Time as good as any, then.
One click on this blog's index would tell you that I'm one of them Bear bloggers who "litters" the Discovery page (and by extension, the new hot hangout space bubbles.town) with cryptic titles. As fond of in-jokes as I am, I have no doubt some of these make little sense to other people, if any, a stretch too far from the contents therein.
When I first alighted on the blogosphere nary two decades ago, I wrote the way I had been raised: crafty, witty titles the likes of respectable print publications would employ. Titles have to be representative of its contents, yet inviting curiosity on its own. It's a showcase of an editor's mental acumen and linguistic mastery. This craft had weathered through turbulent times as cheap clickbaits took its place. As I was but a kid then, the titles I labored over were often overwrought. I persevered. After all, a good title must draw in readers, right? And you can't draw readers in if you don't present them with a modicum of expectation.
As I grew older, I stopped writing "for an audience". My blog is technically public, but it does not have to be performative. When I built this blog, I resolved to treat it as a personal playspace: I have the permission to be zany, to indulge in my own nonsense. Onlookers are welcome to peruse, but will not be serviced. I let my mind wander, making connections as it goes. The titles are whatever association I might make at the moment, and in my mind everything makes sense.
It might not appeal to most people, but I thought the ones who would venture in despite the abstruseness would be interesting. So far, the kind of people who popped into my inbox to say hello are indeed interesting. If you can't make heads or tails of the meaning when you see my blog on the Discovery page, feel free to skip past! If no one actually reads my entries at all? That's fine too. These are letters from present me to future me, stored where a curious passerby could derive some amusement from if they so wish. They have served their purpose by existing.
Ah, the beauty of being obscure.