A Return to Writing

Don't hold me to it

Whether you believe it or not, I don’t much care, but I was planning to return to this blog in 2025. Then, SoCal Edison burned down the neighboring town, so I decided it was more appropriate to wait until 2026.

If memory serves correctly, Ton Thoughts has been an on-and-off project of mine for over a decade now. For longtime readers, I won’t bore you again with the origin story, but my dive into blogging began in eighth grade when I discovered that my history teacher was running his own blog. I received a text from him on Christmas Day, and owing largely to a completely blank schedule that day, I decided to sit in front of a Word document and start typing again.

To say that I am returning to writing is not true. I write every day. When I was younger, the arena for my writing shifted between notebooks for classes to Blogger.com, where I was probably one of the youngest and most consistent users. Now, much of my writing occurs on this fancy platform called Outlook, where the aim of my prose is to get things from people so that I can pay my SoCal Edison bill and continue to live in the part of town that got spared.

My “semi-return” to Ton Thoughts a couple of years ago was too ambitious. Weekly posts? Was I out of my fucking mind? Probably. I was also advertising my writing. What an asshole! My writing should only be accessible to those who take the time to download the Substack app and create an account. Anyone else is just a pedestrian.

The other reason – you can call an excuse – as to why this umpteenth hiatus occurred is that life did actually get pretty busy. Sometime in 2023, I made an error at work and told my boss that “I was kind of bored.” Well, I don’t have much time at work to be bored anymore! It was hard to squeeze leisurely writing and world musings into my daily schedule, so I just removed it altogether. But I miss it. And I hope some longtime readers of this blog missed it, too – especially my readers in Russia.

When I started Ton Thoughts, I remember the writing schedule being something like: 1) finish homework, 2) eat dinner, 3) write on the internet. And, to my surprise, it was pretty manageable. I remember there was a one-year streak (2014 to 2015ish) where I published something once a day, every day, exactly by 9:00 PM PST. I know it was not quality writing, but it was writing.

Every morning, I would wake up and check the stats. Outside of the occasional post where he had absolutely nothing to say, my history teacher was the first (and often the only) to leave a comment. It was a nice routine, but life was certainly easier back in 2015.

I don’t think I have the time – or ability – to crank something out on a daily basis at this point in my life, but maybe I can try weekly again? (There’s certainly enough going on in the world.) Wait, no. That promise fucked me – and all of you – over last time. How about I write when I feel like it? I think that’s a more honest compact.

As we all begin this new year, I hope that life will be calm enough for me to practice my love of writing more regularly. I can talk about the White House again. I can tell you all about my thoughts on grocery shopping. I have a lot to say about rich kids. But if you don’t hear (or read) from me again, don’t hold it against me. We can try again in ’27.

---