Reflections are better with pastries

I very recently had a birthday. I am rapidly reaching the stage where birthdays are less cake and candles and more morbid rumination on if $90 skincare may spare me the look of a graveyard haunt for another year, and so I did two things in rapid succession.

1) I decided to combine work and vacation to engineer an escape to Denmark to enjoy rain and pastries on my actual birthday.
2) I committed to keeping an old-school blog again because since I stopped many years ago, I have often regretted it.

The first went well, minor back injury aside (I didn't eat that many pastries I promise).
The second I immediately dismissed the next day. No-one needs more of me, I thought.

I've given it another week, both of the back injury and considering if I'm actually going to write blog entries again. In the end, I have come down on the side that it would be cruel to deny the world my written wit and so here I am.

lol jokes

Really, it's that I have decided to take up a little more space on this planet, and if that means having a place once again to point friends, family, frenemies and nemeses at ...well, fine. I can promise nothing of substance, but I will almost certainly range over a regularly array of nerdy hobby topics, pop culture observations, and whatever literary instrument of torture I'm currently sampling (right now, I am re-reading The Orestia because I relate very strongly to Cassandra.) And maybe a little of what I am writing, too.

Anyway, give me a month or so, and I'll have actually sorted out the subscriber newsletter version of this nonsense outpost, which will collate all posts and send them as a handy email at a regular interval, in case you struggle to remember the domain which is octopus.horse. That's right, OCTOPUS DOT HORSE.

I bought the domain because it made my laugh uncontrollably for several minutes last year and that's as good a reason as any. And to think, a slimy business consultant an old workplace once brought in spent 20 minutes lecturing me on 'personal brand' because he didn't think I was treating this concept with the gravitas it deserved.

Well, Jason, I think we can both agree I nailed it. Also your cheap shiny suit is the only thing I can remember of that whole debacle. And I remember it because when I first looked you up on LinkedIn it really stood out, like your personal brand was 'clearance rack at Moss Bros'. I predicted you would be awful and you were, but, like Cassandra, I am cursed to see the future but never be believed.

Until next time, friends.