Who Am I?
Definitely not prisoner 24601, though I am resisting the urge to break into song as I’m writing this.
I’m Jason McDonald. Early 50s, native of Pittsburgh, PA. Single dad, dog owner… by day, I’m an IT guy who works for a local university: I fix the computers of the people who are going to change the world. By night? Not so much a “failed” writer because that would imply I ever made a serious effort at making a career of it. More of well-intentioned amateur, looking for a place to let my words run free and burn some mental energy off.
If you’re looking for formal credentials… well, I’ve never had a paid gig as a writer, unless you count the beer-money check I got for being an editor at my college newspaper. I have been fairly prolific answering questions on the Q&A site Quora, and back when they still ran a Top Writer program, I won several years in a row. I also spent a few years writing weekly episode recaps and occasional product reviews for a gaming podcast (Roll For Combat) I’m part of, though I stopped doing that when it started to feel like I was writing the same thing every week.
I’ve tried to start a blog two or three times now, but never quite reached critical mass with it. Life just kinda intruded. But with Quora in particular going downhill (worth its own post at some point), I feel like I should stop generating content for someone else and get back to doing my own thing.
What’s the blog about?
Still figuring it out, testing the waters. It’s going to start out as just “slice of life” with a possibility of it developing a more specific direction as we go. Though I can at least lay down some guard rails what you’ll see on here.
A lot of it is just going to be the reindeer games of daily living. Sports (with a somewhat larger emphasis on the local Pittsburgh teams), movies and TV, gaming (computer and tabletop), music… whatever happens to enter my mental gravity well on any given day.
I may hit on politics from time to time, but the last thing I want is to become A Politics Guy(tm). It’s one of these things where the things that are going on in the world do matter, and I can’t really keep quiet about it ENTIRELY but I also don’t really want to let it consume me either. Also there’s people that simply do it better than I do. (Among others: Jim Wright, aka Stonekettle, who has real and relevant experience from his days in the military, whereas I’m fully aware I’m Just Some Guy With Opinions On The Internet.) But just to put a stake in the ground, I lean left on a lot of issues, so… hope that won’t be a problem, but also don’t especially care if it is.
(One idea I had was just to pre-write a bunch of “soapbox” posts where I write out my thoughts on various issues, and then just point back to those if people care to hear what I think. We’ll see if that happens.)
I do have kids, but I’m going to be careful how much I talk much about them, just because they’re people with their own lives and I want to tread very lightly vis-a-vis turning them into content. They’re also both adults, so there’s not as much “parenting” to discuss at this point. So they may come up from time to time, but they won’t be a constant feature. My DOGS on the other hand…
I also won’t talk about work a lot, but mostly because this is supposed to be what I’m doing for fun. If something of general interest happens at work, I might mention it, but I’m sure as shit not going to spend my free time talking about the latest Windows security patches.
Lastly, I promise to never spoil the day’s Wordle.
What else?
Well, if you’ve read this far, you probably noticed that I write in an informal, almost conversational style. Pauses, changes of direction mid-stream, abuse of the ellipses… I do that more than I should. I hope it’s not distracting, and it’s likely to induce a stroke in your fifth-grade English teacher, but it’s also not likely to change any time soon. You’ve probably also noticed I have an open-door policy on profanity. I try not to be gratuitous with it, and am a firm believer of expressing yourself well, but sometimes the naughty word IS the right one to express the thought.
I’ll try to write something daily, as much to build good habits as to give The People something to read, but for now this is just something I’m doing in my free time, so that’s not some sort of ironclad commitment.
With all that said… LET THE WILD RUMPUS BEGIN.
Mental Zoomies 