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I've been toying with the idea of coming back to the blog for a while but it has always met with some internal resistance.

I think the problem has not been the blogging per se rather everything else that goes with it. But, I miss it and have done for some time.

I feel like I'm in a better place, mentally and emotionally, than I was a year ago and the urge to dip my toes back in the water has been growing.

I miss writing. I miss getting thoughts on the page, exploring language and ideas. It's been a massive part of me for a very long time and it almost feels as though I'm not complete without it.

While I try to maintain that I write just for me there's an inherent contradiction with publishing to the web. The very act of publishing implies an audience which, even in the smallest of ways, can influence what is being written.

I could simply write in a journal (paper or electronic) but, somehow, that feels incomplete having written on the web in one manner or another for so long.

So, I'll be blogging again. This time, however, there will be caveats. Even more than I have imposed previously, but that still doesn't stop me being incredibly nervous about it.

I may have culled my social media accounts over the past few years but (at least for the time being) I don't even want to cross post to micro.blog. That's nothing against Manton, the service or the great community there - I just don't feel it necessary.

I also don't want to get bogged down in the mundane and minutiae surrounding blogging, plugins, coding or any of that. I did that before, got everything working pretty much how I wanted it, and don't need to go that route again. I don't want to get distracted in lieu of actual writing.

This, however, exposes me and what I do. I'll have nothing to hide behind, no excuses. Maybe that's a good thing.

I've always wanted what I do to mean something and spent far too long trying to be something I wasn't. It's time for things to change.

I think I was most natural back in 2014 during the #write365 project, posting to Google+ where the intricacies of platform and technology didn't matter. Yet, the combination of writing every day with what I ended up publishing was draining. What started as a fun project became deeply introspective and, perhaps, lead me down paths I didn't want, or wasn't ready, to walk.

It changed me, maybe even broke me.

So, here I am, still trying to put the last pieces of the jigsaw back together, to see the full picture even though it's different and no longer completely matches the one on the box. Some pieces have been lost, replaced with others that appear to fit but don't match. Others have been turned upside down in an attempt to obscure or forget their part of the whole. Some kind of coping mechanism or self-preservation technique.

So what does this all mean for the blog?

I certainly won't be posting every day and will retain the practice of not (usually) posting on weekends.

I want it to mean something so will try not to post "filler" content just so there's something new.

Just because things will have meaning doesn't preclude them from being short. I will likely post thoughts, ideas, quotes and, maybe, expand on them later. Not everything has to be an essay - that's something I learnt a long time ago.

Things will likely get personal, intensely so at times, and I make no apologies for that.

I will write what needs to be written.

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