Alasdair Watson

I started a blog on this specific domain, black-ink.org on June 22nd, 2000. I was 23, and am now 48. As I’ve noted before, I’ve moved around a bit over the years, in response to social media and other nonsense, but this is still where I think of as “home” on the internet, and I moved as much of everything as I could back here years ago, and stayed. I still make posts that are roughly “blogging” now and again on Facebook, although I don’t think of them as proper writing, and I certainly don’t think of them as more than emphemera.

But what I write here these days, (particularly in the form of posts like this, or photoposts), I think of as a bit more permanent. I don’t intend to let this archive vanish. I own the complete tech stack (in the sense that it’s on a server I pay for, and a database I can simple hoover it out of onto my local computer whenever I want), I can move it when I wish, and change it how I like, and I intend it to last. I may not write much here, but I do sort of hope that I can keep it ticking over with at least a couple of posts a year, so that it will continue to reflect my whole life from 2000 onwards. It might not be the most intimate account in the world (because I’m no longer foolish enough to share every fleeting thought with the internet like I did way back when I was younger and stupider, and the population of the internet was much smaller), but I hope that those who are or were nearest and dearest at points in my life would be able to use it as an aide memoire, in much the same way I do now.

At times over the last 25 years I’ve written with the intent to entertain an imagined reader (or a not-imagined reader, because I knew friends were reading), at times I’ve written as notes, at times I’ve just bookmarked and commented on other people’s stuff (and I’m happy that replacing the broken tooling that made that happen with a modern version earlier this year has given me that back again).

Sometimes it’s been a diary, and sometimes it’s been just this side of gibberish. Some of it, I shudder to look back on, some of it I’m proud of. These days, I write mostly for myself in the future – hence a post like this, in some sense – but I know a few folk look in here now and again, and I hope they get something out of it, even if it’s just a useful link now and again.

It’s sobering to realise that if I’m making a post like this on the 50th anniversary, I’ll be 73. Modern medicine being what it is, there’s every chance I’ll be doing that. But equally: it’s not totally certain that I will – I have far too many friends gone well before that age already. This blog may be over halfway done. (Yes yes, middle aged man feels the cold hand of death on his shoulder, film at 11. I’ll be buying a inappropriate car next.)

With any luck, I’ll remember to post the 30th anniversary post on time.