________  ________  ________
   2017-06-16                                   /        \/        \/    /   \
                                               /       __/         /_       _/
   I suppose  after  days of  tinkering with  /        _/         /         /
the idea of setting  up a  phlog and getting  \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
the  layout  looking  good  and  whatever  I    /        \/        \/    /   \
should take the time to write an entry?        /        _/         /_       _/
                                              /-        /        _/         /
   So  the  what  and  why: I'd  been  doing  \________/\________/\___/____/
personal blogs on and off  for more  or less
two decades as  an outlet for whatever's on my mind, no real focus or schedule
or anything, just a personal journal. Once Twitter arrived on the scene I fell
out  of the habit because in Twitter I found the same kind of outlet only much
more  immediate.  I didn't feel  like I  needed to be articulate or even  make
sense  on Twitter, I could  just  roll in,  spray 140 characters and take off,
like some asshole yelling from his car as he cruises past.

   In  Twitter I also  found a place where that stuff belongs and  a community
doing  similar things, I guess Twitter was  to  expelling  the thought  of the
moment what LiveJournal was to angsty teen poetry and slash fiction?

   Over time and with liberal  application of  brand and celebrity Twitter got
fat and slow  and stupid, the spam got thick, the users got more obnoxious and
louder and I lost  interest then eventually jumped ship.  That left me missing
an outlet. I  tried to re-start a blog a few times but nothing  took, I'd just
obsess over which platform  to use and how to make it look then lose interest.
I hopped  on and off a  few social  sites and more recently I've been flirting
with Mastodon a bit and it seems alright but it's just Twitter all over again,
people can  joke  about  how  terrible  "the birdsite"  is  but most  people's
behavior on  Mastodon is  no  different  to Twitter so, you  know, don't throw
stones in glass houses.

   It was on Mastodon that someone mentioned Gopher and I was like "I remember
that! I  wonder  what's new!" and started  poking  around the space on SDF. It
looked mostly like I remember it from  last  time  I bothered to look; lots of
empty spaces,  lots  of test files but I'd never noticed the phlogs before and
that was really cool  to me, like discovering a dusty old corner of a library.
Not necessarily secret, but behind a door you normally wouldn't think to open.

   There's a lot that appeals to me about a Gopherspace phlog:

   1. It gets me back to where I started,  long wordy  posts, formatted and
      compiled  by handand strips  meof the  engine/design/format obsession
      that  was  derailing  previous  attempts to get back into keeping  an
      online journal.

   2. Desocialization. It  seems  like almost everything in the surface web
      these days comes with a weight of social baggage. A comments section,
      an associated Twitter  account  or  Facebook page, pingbacks, etc.  A
      phlog strips all that away, it's not much  more than  a collection of
      textfiles.

   3. Utilising  the SDF; I've been  a member for a while but mostly all  I
      did was log  in every  now  and  then, type "ls"  and  log off again.
      There's a lot  to  the  SDF and there's a lot they do that just isn't
      done   anywhere  else.  It  really  is  a  treasure  that  should  be
      appreciated and utilised more. I don't know shit  about BSD or Gopher
      or any of that (spent over an hour last night just trying to format a
      fancy heading and failed), but trying to do as much as I can natively
      rather than doing it  all where I'm more comfortable and transferring
      it across gives me a chance to learn to do more in BSD and on SDF.

   4. The "door" mentioned above makes it fun. You put a  blog post on  the
      web, Google  finds it, people all over find it searching for whatever
      thing you may have mentioned, it  spreads outinfinitely. Gopher is  a
      walled  garden,  people don't  accidentally  end up in Gopher  space,
      people  visit Gopher space to experience  Gopher content from  Gopher
      users and I really like that idea. It feels nostalgic in  a way, like
      the BBS back in the old days. Also in that vein and following on from
      point 3; by providing  content, even  personal content  like a humble
      journal, gives back and helps grow the SDF and it's Gopher space.

   So that's how I start: My name is Cat and this is a phlog, a blog in Gopher
space, called FAX SEX.



EOF