I occasionally picture myself old and gray and still writing Ogiue Maniax. You really never know what the future might hold, but tomorrow will be 16 years since I started, and it increasingly feels like that vision might come true.
Blogging this year has been more of a challenge through reasons somewhat beyond my control. I’ve considered reducing my posting schedule further, but I do worry that it’ll put even more pressure on me to make every blog entry some kind of refined masterpiece.
That said, I do think I might be imposing overly high standards on myself. Recently, I was recalling the earliest days of Ogiue Maniax, when I let just about anything escape my brain and end up in a post, and I’ve started to wonder if I should make at least a partial return to those days. I’ve positioned myself as someone with a degree of insight, but maybe I should be more comfortable having some mediocre opinions every now and then.
Funnily enough, what made me think about returning to the basics is the continued and active enshittification of Twitter. Over the past seven years or so, I decided to let my more off-the-cuff thoughts exist on Twitter while I devoted longer form things to the blog, but now that everything is on fire on Twitter, I might very well find myself spit balling right here. I’ve joined some alternatives like Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, but am still unsure of where I’ll land.
Ultimately, what Ogiue Maniax has become is not so much a career or even a life‘s calling, but something much simpler. It’s a place for me to question, be it myself, others, why I feel the way I do. It’s a place for me to anchor my passion. And sometimes it’s work, in a certain sense, but I’m really only beholden to myself and the notion that I can grow by writing. This is a home online I’ve been building for the last 16 years, and each post is another brick. Will I ever be done? Let’s see.
