Mortality Blogexpiration date: 8.7.2086

So… what, I only ever post to the mortality blog when I have a particularly interesting dream, or when someone dies? Is that really worth paying for a domain name?

The mortality blog is meant to record things that might otherwise disappear when I die, let’s be frank. I’m not sure where it all fits, how to get it all out, but it seems important that it be accessible, somewhere, in case someone finds it interesting. In my own totally biased opinion, I’m an intriguing and complicated person. But how much of that matters to anyone who isn’t Matt Lohkamp?

Some of the stuff that might otherwise end up here probably shows up on Facebook. Which is cool, because it almost serves a different purpose – Facebook posts reach a very specific audience of friends and family and coworkers and classmates, who are generally people I feel I can relate to well-enough to discuss sensitive issues. Whereas the mortality blog is public. I mean, no one reads it, but they could if they wanted to – is that significant, that anyone could read my blog but no one does, while only a couple hundred people can read stuff I post on facebook, and a couple dozen actually do?

Well maybe I’ll roll a bunch of topic ideation into the end of this blog post along with a well-intentioned but completely unrealistic resolution to write here more often.

• We could talk about money: how much money I make, how much I should be making, the way I decide how much to charge clients, etc. We could also talk about how the practice of tipping makes me uncomfortable.
• We could talk about procrastination, a favorite subject, and why I spend my downtime wishing I had something more important to do, only to find myself getting distracted by the most insignificant things when I actually have something more important I should be focusing on.
• We could talk about sexuality, because I can’t help having that running through my head every other day of the week.
• We could talk about my extremely preliminary attempts to wade into… I don’t know, feminism, privilege, rape culture, whatever all that stuff is; and why I’m even interested in it.
• … or on a broader subject, we could look at how I look at things – my approach to new subjects, to sorting out how I feel about things, how I measure the extent to which other people’s feelings figure into my own opinions, etc.
• We could talk about life and death, since I’m scared to death of my own mortality (and everyone else’s) and yet can’t seem to help thinking about it sometimes. We could talk about abortion and the death penalty, if we wanted to talk about controversial stuff.
• We could talk about video games and computer games, because I have all kinds of experience with that stuff.
• We could talk about music. I like lots of different kinds of music – I mean, mostly a few kinds, but the exceptions to the rules are heinous exceptions, and I do take perverse delight in appreciating art that other people ridicule or revile.
• Maybe I could do some thinking about the relationship between morality and legality – are they mutually exclusive? Are there issues that are primarily the domain of one or the other? Regardless of how I feel about abortion, gay marriage, and monopolies, should there be laws that address them, either to protect or prohibit?
• The extreme degree of disconnect I feel with our government. How is the office of the president of the united states important if nothing he does directly effects me? Same question, senators and governors and mayors. After all the effort of ‘doing the right thing’ and educating myself and voting, does milk cost any less? Does gas? Can I roll through a stop sign with impunity when it’s clear no one is coming? Does anything that our elected officials do actually impact my life? That might be a good thing to write about, yes.
• My interest in places like 4chan? I mean yes, perverse appreciate for ridiculed and reviled art, disdain for taboo. Maybe those things would be good to think about.