Recursive Words

I’m beginning to wonder if the entire point of falling down rabbit holes is to discover further rabbit holes.

While deliberating about resurrecting the WordPress incarnation of my blog, I questioned the mighty Google Gemini – that has read the entire internet, and therefore knows everything – about the relative strengths and weaknesses of the leading online publishing platforms. I of course did this after resurrecting the blog – in a ridiculous search for validation.

What I didn’t count on was the insistence that neither Substack or WordPress were the best option.

Google’s AI monster was insistent that Medium had become by far the best option to publish anything on the internet now. No matter how many “but what about” questions I hurled at it, it was insistent – and sort of made sense.

And that’s why my blog has now grown another hydra-like head – at Medium.

I’m nothing if not consistently deranged.

Until several years ago – when John Green ruined it for me – the strapline on my blog read “It’s turtles all the way down”.

In my case, I was referring to (I think) a Bertram Russell lecture about the nature of our existence in the universe. An old lady in the audience told Russell that he had it all wrong – that (as any Discworld reader knows) the earth was actually a flat disc balanced on the back of four elephants, who in turn were standing on the back of a giant turtle.

Russel challenged the lady – “what’s beneath the turtle?” – to which she replied “very clever sonny – it’s turtles, all the way down”.

I can’t help feeling that the infinite turtle Jenga stack quite neatly describes my various self-publishing escapades on the internet.

In response to re-imaging an existence at WordPress yesterday, a good friend remarked – quite rightly – that I was hard work – but that she would try to follow wherever I went. I don’t think she quite understood the level of idiocy I was operating at – that I wasn’t moving – I was going to be in both places at the same time.

I suppose it’s three places at the same time now – WordPress, Substack, and Medium.

Perhaps I should rename the blog “Cerberus”.

I’ve always thought Hagrid’s three headed dog in the first Harry Potter book should had been called Cerberus instead of Fluffy – Cerberus was the many headed dog in Greek mythology that guarded the underworld, in case you’re wondering.

Anyway. It’s getting late.

I really don’t mind where you read what I write. That you’re reading my words at all is kind of lovely and wonderful.