I can hear you asking. I can hear the incredulity whirring behind your crinkled eyebrows. Why, exactly, would someone restart a blog?
A blog? A web-log? You say. Seems a bit old fashioned, doesn’t it?
This form of communication peaked about twenty years ago. No flash. No pizzazz. Virality is unlikely. This is not monetizable content, and has not been for decades. Few eyeballs. As a bookstore owner, surely you know people don’t read anymore? Might as well start a circular pamphlet, or take up Morse Code, or apprentice yourself to a pigeon fancier.
I Am the Lord of Low Expectations
I do not expect to win the internet with anything I create here. Neither fame nor financial windfalls will result. On this we can agree.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I want to reclaim something personal by writing this way. It doesn’t have to be good or particularly interesting. Just putting it here seems to satisfy some minimum requirement for its existing. I’ll do my best not to bore anyone who wanders in by accident. You also only improve by actually doing the thing you’re trying to do. I want to write better. So I have to write.
But that’s just part of the answer.
I’d like to have a spiffed up spot to send people who are interested in my work elsewhere. My recent article for Thrillist was discovered by the good folks at the Atlas Obscura podcast who then tracked me down on the former iteration of this site, something which might be charitably described as a rusting piece of internet detritus, and asked if I wanted to join them on an upcoming episode. Hmmm, I thought, I should probably remodel this place if I don’t want to get reported to the literary HOA.
I’m going to start shopping a novel soon. This seems like a good spot to send people for more information either about me, or the project, or the world of the 19th century tea clipper races.
Y Pickles, Tho?
It’s a fair question, and one that I don’t have a great answer to. I like the idea of the site having a personality that is related to but a little distinct from me personally. Some thing akin to what Chuck Wendig does at his inimitable Terrible Minds. There’s nothing to the title, really, other than a pickled cucumber is just… eh… it’s a pickle. That’s it. A little semi-tautology for you. A little briny tongue in cheek. I almost named this blog The Pickled Cucumber when I started it a decade ago but I got scared too many people would think it was a sexual innuendo. Now? IDGAF. Whatever get’s you going. If salty, dick-shaped veggies are your thing, please enjoy this website responsibly.
Also, though? Life is kind of absurd. It’s pretty silly to take it seriously. So, why not make your central internet identity a dumb joke? Makes as much sense as anything else, I’d wager. I sally-forth as an adherent of the philosophy of “Everything Everywhere All At Once”, my banner is a rock with googly eyes on it. My website is a pickled cucumber.
That’s It, I Guess
I wanna do it because I wanna do it. The Pickled Cucumber is funny to me as a theme and concept. I hope you enjoy.
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About Joshua Rigsby
Joshua Rigsby runs an independent bookstore in a small southern town. His writing has been featured on Thrillist, Atlas Obscura, Southern California Public Radio, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Atlantic.
