I haven’t blogged about blogging for a while, so I figure we’re due for an update: You may have noticed that posting has been somewhat sporadic lately, warranted by a combination of being totally busy and being totally undisciplined. I’m not one of those guys who apologize for that kind of thing; I’ve been doing this long enough to accept that these things happen.

During this unofficial break, I had some time to think about the site and what, if anything, has inspired me to maintain Nervous Acid in one form or another for more than five years. To do that, I went back to 2003 — to a set of archives that I saved because the writing on the site meant something to me. At some point in 2002, I felt like the baggage of becoming a so-called public figure had weighed on my ability to write freely, so I signed up for a free Typepad site and established a thinly-veiled but essentially anonymous confessional called Nervous Acid.

I discovered blogging in the late ’90s when I very randomly stumbled upon Ultrasparky. I was working at an Internet start-up in Chicago, having moved from New York City for the first time in my life. Despite the fact that I “officially” worked from 7-to-3, I generally had only three hours of actual work to accomplish each day. Finding Sparky gave me something to do in between downloading dozens of gigabytes of music from Napster, yes. But it also gave me a lifeline to New York City that I desperately needed. Sparky was witty and insightful and serious and occasionally whimsical; he was my imaginary friend. (Since then, he’s become one of my best friends in real life.)

From there, I realized that there was an entire community of gay men using this new medium as a shared experience. My experience in self-publishing gave me instant empathetic access to some of these bloggers; I felt like I knew them because, even before my first blog, I was already one of them — an articulate confessor with an itch to share my paradigms, occasionally self-absorbed delusions, and totally valid (yet fleeting) emotional response. I have no shame.

I still look at a few of these bloggers as incredible writers: Jeremy, who wrote under the pseudonym SoBlo, revealed more than most memoirists and did it with a voice that was instantly recognizable to me. He shut down after an incident where his anonymity was compromised and a relationship was damaged, but I can’t help but recall the personalism and the personality. In spite of the fact that we’ve still never met, I still put forth the belief that he is a good person: This was a man who sent me, a total stranger, a mixed CD in the mail because he thought I could use a little cheering up. He was right, and it helped.

There was also Aaron, who wrote 8 Legs and Aanthems — depending on which era of gay blogging you follow. Aaron was that rare example of a blogger who was actually, like, a totally amazing writer. If he had made the whole thing up and put a hardcover on it, he’d be a best-selling author. But Aaron was a truth-seeker and a truth-speaker; he later became a dear friend and a creative inspiration.

I could keep going — about Michael and Bradford and the recently departed Boy’s Briefs — but what really got me thinking about all this was a recent post on Towleroad. Obviously, in the past five years, Towleroad has become a hugely successful commercial gay news site — with its author, Andy, even scoring press credentials to this year’s Democratic National Convention. In 2003, however, Andy was mixing his journalist roots with a healthy dose of exhibitionism. Whereas today’s Towleroad regularly posts photos of shirtless models, Andy was — at one point, anyway — not above posting a video of himself in the shower listening to John Mayer. He has always been an intellectual presence on the site, but at one point, he also maintained an endearing physical presence on the site. In other words, there’s a reason that the site’s very name reflects his own.

This fact seems to have been obscured over time, and a rare personal interjection from earlier this month — detailing a luggage-related issue with JetBlue — has inspired 100 commenters to date, with some of his readers appalled that he would use the site to air a personal grievance: “You’re right to be upset, but to put up such an arrogant, waa-waa post seems to me like someone is forgetting they aren’t the center of the universe,” wrote Dan. Thomas moaned: “Andy Andy Andy. Tacky Tacky Tacky. I adore your site … [but] this is the first post I have ever seen from you which is a clear abuse of your position at the helm of widely read resource.” Said Paulie, “Sorry Andy, but no sympathy from me whatsoever. Get a grip dude … and stop whining.” Another anonymous reader offered:

“Sorry for your loss, but this blog is an important news source for many Gay people. You should wear that mantle with pride and not compromise your journalistic integrity by dealing with a personal issue by leveraging your readership. It is an injustice to the quality of this blog. Very Joemygod, but not up to towleroad standards.”

To me, this is the sound of nails running down a chalkboard. Blogging is where we inform and entertain and occasionally adulate, but it’s also where we mourn and contemplate and occasionally whine. There are several fundamental differences between, say, Towleroad and CNN: For one, Towleroad is essentially’s Andy’s house. We don’t live there, we’re just visiting. For another thing, you are not welcome to comment on CNN’s coverage. If you think Obama is making a mistake by choosing Joe Biden as his Vice President, they don’t care. Yet in their rush to criticize Andy, these commenters completely ran past the fact that Andy gave them their voice. Because even in its newfound role as a “widely read resource,” Towleroad is still a personal blog at heart. I know that Andy gets it.

For some reason, this episode got me thinking about community and expression and all of the things that inspired me to sign up for that Typepad account in 2002. The common denominator for everything I loved about blogging in 2002 — and for everything I wrote about up until 2004, when a car accident unplugged my site for the first time — revolves around the principle of sharing. Not oversharing, as a recent New York Times article commented upon, but the suggestion that my experiences are valuable and my opinions are valid. That they’re worth writing about, and that they’re worth reading. That embarrassment is spared only for cowards.

I stopped writing lengthier personal pieces for this site several months ago due to a lack of time, but going through my 2003–2004 archives, I found several shorter posts that didn’t take long to write and still maintained some resonance. I may repost some of these pieces for the sake of reestablishing a theme, but also to remind me that I don’t need to be Joan Didion every time I sit down at the computer.

I’d like to keep posting those shorter, pithier comments, videos, and links as I’m inspired to, but I’m not sure I want to maintain a linklog. I do, however, want to start posting music again — as a springboard for commentary about the artists or the unrelated stories that come to my head while listening to them — and I hope you’ll do like my web-friend Ryan did when he told me about an iTunes playlist of music he downloaded from my site. That was just cool.

But mostly, I feel like I want to reconstruct my physical presence on the site. We all know that there’s an intellect behind Nervous Acid, but do you know who I am?

I started reading blogs to find out; I started writing one to tell you.