I have been blogging since the early days of ‘web logs’– long enough to have initially hated the lazy portmanteau fusing of the two words.
These days, most blogs are very targeted websites with a specific array of subjects and often written to adhere to many cookie cutter guidelines in order to gain more viewership and rank better in Google. My blog is nothing like that. It is my writing outlet. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you stumble across this page, you won’t find any sugar coated posts with short, easily digestible text blocks and stupid pictures laced with memes and bad jokes. I tend to write long-winded and extensively. People have put me on blast for my use of flowery language or my lack of being concise, but over time I’ve learned that I shouldn’t have to apologize for having a personal writing style, or for respecting that the craft of writing– in any language– is more than just writing concise, tidbit style text that can easily be consumed by people who don’t want to work to process information (or appreciate language).
So with that said, I tend to write longform rants, rambles, ideas, memoirs, crack theories, really long dream logs, and essays (longform relative to the average blog). Or basically: anything I want.
I personally think the stuff I write is interesting, and that’s why I write. Because I believe that writing is something that everyone should regularly continue to do throughout their life, so I have a place to put down my thoughts, ideas, and feelings, and, when I am lucky, because occasionally I write something that someone I know reads who appreciates what I put down.
I’m not making an effort to write to any audience or reach people, but if I touch people in someway, then that’s awesome.
Why Man Up, James?
I don’t really know. Some people get annoyed at this ‘Man Up’ trope, I think it is hilarious. Secondly, I think my entire life is a process of me continually ‘manning up’ — and since I often write about my own life, it makes sense. Third, I wanted to take my blog off of a subdomain for my other website and manupjames.com just kind of rolls off the tongue.