Armchair Scholar

Welcome to my website!

This website is a work in progress, a place where I hope to catalog thoughts on things that are of interest to me, such as: books and reading, writing, bookbinding, practices of making, and nonreligious cultivations of faith and mystery.

Why a website?

Writing anything is an excercise in being articulate. I am interested in exploring the website's use as a space for writing in between the published book and the private journal. A website is both more public than one's private writings—people can visit and read them—and more private than social media—one has to travel to a webiste, seek it out or else stumble into it. Like a cozy shop, a website is a room with an unlocked door. Or a bound volume on a shelf at the library. Open and hidden. Self-contained but permeable.

One of the temptations of social media is as a place to be found. In an era when we are not calling at each other's doors or calling on the phone, a website can be a place to make oneself available. Like a post office box, it is a way besides maintaining a physical address to settle or hold a location in the world. Having a website, I can say: "Here is where you can find me."

I am interested in play and learning. I have been curious about and desiring to step one foot into coding for a long time and mintaining a website is a way for me to indulge in learning new things (internet protocol, HTML, CSS, &c) with a practical result—a place of my own to host my writings and contact information—in a nonacademic, nonprofessional context.

Currently reading: This Life, by Martin Hägglund