Over the last couple of months, we’ve been getting ready to shift A3 from private beta to public release. Part of that process has been figuring out a marketing plan, potentially including creating some blog-esque content. Which, inevitably, has made me think of this largely-ignored personal blog in turn.

Across my two decades of posting here, a handful of recurrent themes have emerged. One is, I’m apparently great at totally forgetting, and then coming up with again, ‘new’ ideas and discoveries. Enough so that, on more than one occasion, I’ve thought of something clever, Googled it to see what anyone else had written on the topic, and discovered that the first search result was actually an extended post from me, on this very site, written a few years prior.

So perhaps it’s not a surprise that, while I was puzzling through ways I might get back to writing here more regularly, I started thinking that I would be most likely to do so by making this blog a repository for all the random stuff that didn’t fit into a more professional, structured, authority-building, niche-targeted approach to content creation—a collection of random storytelling, catalogued misadventures, and loose musings—only to discover that I had also decided the exact same thing about 18 months (and, embarrassingly, only six or seven posts) back.

At least it’s nice to know I’m consistent?

Anyway, one other thing I’ve learned, which I’m also sure I’ve written about repeatedly here before, is how much productivity and creativity and forward progress in life is sort of like surfing. It feels like, if you want to get going, you should just start paddling as hard as you can. But if you’re doing that on flat water, you’re not going to have much luck. Instead, you have to wait for a wave of clarity and inspiration to come, to pick you up, to give you a boost of momentum. And then you start paddling. The two together—momentum plus effort—are the only way you can actually get up and surf.

As someone who always wants to be in control of the situation, that’s a hard equation to accept. Because, if you can’t summon the waves, you just have to learn to watch, and wait, and be grateful when they arrive.

I suppose I end up repeating things on this site because it takes a few passes for even the most clear and important and obvious lessons to sink in. Which is also, I think, one of the reasons I blog in the first place: the hope of memorializing those big lessons outside the confines of my feeble brain. Sort of a memo to myself.

And though that obviously hasn’t worked great, that also shouldn’t be surprising, given my ability to forget notes I’ve left to myself in even far more permanent and visible ways. In fact, my prior self was clearly so taken by the importance of patience and acceptance and surfing the waves of life as they unfold that I got a reminder of it (“amor fati,” Nietzche’s admonition to love your fate) literally tattooed on the inside of my left forearm.

So, it seems, I’m a bit of a slow learner. But, as I said, at least I’m consistent.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

When I posted six months back to say I was powering down this blog, and moving on to some fresh, new format, it seemed like absolutely the right idea. But, to be honest, during that intervening time, no fresh, new format ideas have really sprung to mind. What has, instead, are inspirations for posts—stories and insights and funny tidbits and crazy theories.

In that prior post about winding things down, I tried to share a broader point: these days, I’m working on living as my most authentic self, and trying to be patient in a way that I haven’t always in the past. But an equally big lesson I’ve learned over the years is that the perfect is often the enemy of the good. So, frequently, you just need jump in with your best attempt, getting down to work even if that means looking dumb and making mistakes and figuring things out along the way.

All of which is to say, I guess: I’m back, blogging again with this site more or less exactly the way it was before. In my own words from twenty years ago, when I similarly rebooted this blog despite my prior intentions: sorry mom, but it’s cheaper than therapy.

I booted up the current version of this site nearly 20 years back, and since then have racked up more than 2,500 posts. But, of late, I’ve been having a harder and harder time getting myself to write here. Yesterday, I finally realized why: I think this blog has pretty much run it’s course. More to the point, I no longer feel like it reflects who I am, the myriad and important and sometimes painful ways I’ve screwed up and learned and grown over those two decades. In short, this blog just isn’t who I want to be in the world right now.

So I’m working on something new. But I’m also working on it slowly. Because one of those things I’ve learned is that life moves at its own pace. And one of the reasons I’ve made messes in the past is that I’ve been impatient, that I’ve wanted to find resolutions or to make progress right now, rather than waiting and watching and being and letting things unfold in the way and on the timeline they’re meant to.

I think a lot these days about the classic Borscht Belt joke: an old bull and a young bull stand on top of a hill, looking down at the herd of cows in the valley below.

The young bull says, “I’m going to run down the hill and fuck one of those cows.”

The old bull replies, “I’m going to walk down the hill, and I’m going to fuck all of them.”

Which is perhaps both a strange and exactly right place to wrap things up. So, I’ll simply close by saying: a new iteration of joshuanewman.com is coming. Possibly soon, or possibly not. But, at least, when it’s ready, when the time is right.