Welcome to my new site design!

*polishes inside of screen*

*screen makes squeaky clean noise*

It’s been a good amount of time (okay, it’s been YEARS) since I blogged regularly in this space, but that is going to be changing soon.

Within the next month or so – possibly in the next few days, because I’m impatient – I’m going to start adding fresh posts centered on topics related to my professional interests: city building, planning and development, the Rust Belt, urbanism (and suburbanism) (and maybe even ruralism, because I’m multifaceted), and a bunch of other related topics that I find compelling.

Why am I suddenly jumping back into this, you ask? Honestly, it was because of a tweet:

These are topics I’m interested in, that I’m constantly exploring on my own, and I want to start “thinking out loud” about them. I find myself needing an outlet for the things I’m reading, learning about, and encountering in my work.

I want to give them their own plot of land, their own starry skies above. I want to watch how they’ll grow.

Weidenbaum makes another good point a few tweets later in that thread above:

“Only people who don’t write think you need to know what you think before you write. You write to learn what you think.”

I’ve been working in this field for more than a dozen years now. My hair is thinner and grayer than when I started, and I’ve maybe put on a few pounds around the midsection, but yet I recognize the staggering amount I still don’t know about these subjects. Curiosity is how we combat stagnation, professionally and personally, and I think blogging will help with that. There’s always something more to learn.

I’m also doing this because, after what we have all endured over the past year-plus thanks to Covid Hellworld, I think we’re all looking for a little more community, wherever we can find it.

I’ve been fortunate not to have lost anyone especially close to me during the pandemic, so I count myself insanely lucky. But just like a huge number of us, I’ve foregone seeing people outside my immediate circle, isolated myself from tethers to the rest of humanity, and doomscrolled more than a handful of days away. Putting my energy into something more constructive like blogging seems like a good way to re-establish a link to the world, even if it’s a virtual one.

And, lastly, bottom line: I think it’ll be fun. Fun is good. We all deserve a little more fun these days.

So if that sounds like something you’d be on board with, I hope you’ll join me. It’d be nice to find a few more folks to have some fun with.

In the meantime, you can connect with me on Twitter or check out the archives of my newsletter (which will also soon be getting a reboot!). I’m glad you’re here, and I look forward to diving into this with you.