I’m not one to apologize for not posting regularly, but I would like to brush off some dust here. It’s been awhile. But if Homestar Runner can return after a year of inaction, so can I. Greatplay.net has existed in quite a variety of forms since 2004, the year I started getting really interested in the internet. While I haven’t spent all that time blogging and writing on the internet, my life since then has been incredibly devoted to working on web-related projects. Even today, while not blogging I have been working on research projects using the internet as well as spending roughly the last year setting up an online multiplayer game (Settlement Fight) which is still in a very extended beta.

It seems to be a December tradition of mine to relaunch and redesign my blog. By pure coincidence, it is December again, and here I am — trying to start this blog anew. It’s probably been the fifth time I’ve tried to do so. I still find myself stuck between spending a lot of time doing things on the internet that I enjoy, and having a lot of great ideas that I want to write about, but not having enough time to complete anything. I end up with dozens of projects I have finished half-way before losing interest. For the new year, I want to work on fighting that. This is part of the plan — the revival of Greatplay.net as my personal home and location of my ideas.

To do that I have cleaned house and enacted a few changes, including:

• The removal of all ads on this site: While they were making some money, they weren’t professional looking, and I felt bad having them run while I didn’t put anything here.
• A new layout: I wanted to clean up the layout for improved blog readibility, so I returned the site to a slightly modified version of how it has looked in the past.
• A new way to résumé: Inspired by a post at The World of Stuff, a blog I have had an ongoing relationship with throughout my blogging years and has always been responsible in keeping me online in some form or another, Jordon writes about how his boss made him realize that “If I’m to get a career in web development (or anything computer-related, I guess), then my web site should be my portfolio.” While I don’t want a job in computer-related technology, I do think having a blog could be a great way to show myself. Interestingly enough, I write about my website as my essay on the Common Application for getting into colleges.
• A new place for essays: I have been again reminded that anything can get published on the internet. So rather than keeping all my ideas to myself or trying to write a book and get things published, why not strike the most reasonable middle ground and post on the internet? As long as I keep my ideas reasonable, I shouldn’t risk offending anyone (hopefully). And who knows, maybe people will like what I have to say.
• No commitment to any schedule: It is a lot easier to focus on college and non-blogging projects if I think of this more as a house of essays rather than a blog that requires very regular posting. The reason I stopped blogging altogether was that tri-weekly blogging was too time consuming; especially relative to the amount of readership I was managing. I’d rather lie low and just think of the website as a place for me to post ideas when I have them — this will allow me to keep writing without overloading me and making me quit altogether.
• I’m still mad at Republicans: …so you can expect a return to some politics articles in the future. However, I am now far more moderate than I was in the past years of extremist political rants, and I’m also mad at the Democrats too. I’m also studying Political Science and Economics in college, so the issue is a lot closer to me and I know a lot more about it, relative to how I was last year.
• I’m still not going to talk about my life directly: It’s still just not how I roll. It feels weird. This is an ideas blog, not a life blog.
• No apologies: Luckily, I am getting increasingly more reasonable throughout the years (I hope). The last few times I relaunched my website, I deleted all the old posts that I felt like didn’t properly represent my views. This time I instead will leave those posts intact. Perhaps I will put small disclaimers on them that they represent me from the past. (5/11/11 EDIT: I ended up deleting all of the posts that consisted solely of Youtube videos, since I want a commitment to original content. AND 8/27/12 EDIT: I ended up deleting most of the partisan essays that were basically just unreasoned overgeneralizations.)
• I’m not going to Twitter: In the past I twittered along with blogging. I don’t really feel like doing that anymore — it never really worked out to benefit me in any way. If I have links to share, I’ll probably share them directly in a blog post. I will not be reclaiming or using my Twitter account for anything more than following other Twitter people.

So we’ll see how this goes. For now, consider Greatplay.net back again.

Followed up in: A Blogging Experiment