Back again

I wanted to kill my Chimpmail account, because I never used it. It seemed to be just another chore. What to do instead? Everyone kept saying 'Go to Substack' and it really did seem like a new exciting thing that fit the bill. So I went to Substack, told my Chimpmail subscribers (which was the first email I'd sent for ages) to find me there, and then waited a week and killed the Chimpmail account. This is what I put in that first Substack: 

I suddenly realised that I invited my Mail Chimps to join me here without anything to offer you. Howdy! I’m hoping to get my blogging head back into play so that participating is more interesting than a mere newsletter subscription :)

Here’s an image from my current exhibition with poet Melinda Smith (Corridors of Power, M16 Artspace in Canberra showing until 26 October). It’s a photo of the MV TAMPA, the ship that rescued asylum seekers from their sunken boat in 2001 and then sat anchored off Christmas Island until the Howard government decided what to do with them (which was essentially lock them up on that particular island). Melinda is an excellent poet with a penchant for anagrams, and so this is one of our TAMPA anagram images. There are four in the series. They are accompanied by some mock Cabinet Minutes and another batch of excellent poems set by hand in letterpress.

So look at that, I am making you much more welcome than those politicians did to the poor refugees. You are always welcome on this site (unless you are a troll).

And then, a few posts later, I just felt like Substack was a bad fit. It is like everything else on the internet these days: entrepreneurial. There's a lot of expectation that writing this way will generate an income. While I'd love to make an income from my writing, I'm just not dependable enough to give value for money. I'm random, scatty, impulsive, and easily distracted halfway through a project by another project. Or by some really cool clouds, or by the elusiveness of next door's cat. Also, there's SO MANY bells and whistles that I just don't need. 

Recently, on one of my sharper days, I remembered that I'd started a second Ampersand Duck blog (spoiler: this one) during the COVID-19 lockdown months. And reading through it again, I remembered why I like Blogger. First of all, HOW AMAZING IS IT THAT BLOGGER STILL EXISTS LIKE THIS? My first Blogger blog is still mostly all there, apart from many links that don't link and images that have dropped out, and as you can see, this blog is still functional. So I'm jumping ship from Substack back to here, because it feels like putting on a really comfy pair of tracksuit pants and slippers (which is what I'm actually wearing right now) and doesn't feel like I'm competing with the Big Kids. 

SO HELLO! I want to make a vow: I will never ask you for money here, nor will I vie with some of my fave writers and celebrities for your attention. It's just me, my thoughts, and a whole bunch of writing about the things I have been unpacking and sorting – and the things I will hopefully be making during this next chapter of my life now that I have a permanent home for the first time in ten years.

I'm going to migrate my recent Substack posts over to here, and then here I will be, for as long as Blogger stays alive, and as long as I do. In the immortal words of a great writer, "let's see who rusts first".