Well then. This is day one of the no-backspace blog. Is that what it'll be called? Who knows! Can't go back and edit that now though—such is the point.

I'm doing this for two reasons: one—I want to do a regular post that is much more natural than some of my other ones. I wanted something that's every Sunday, and less planned.

Two—I need to handcuff myself a bit in order to drop my perfectionist tendencies. I do this a lot with things that overwhelm my willpower: I unplug and hide my xbox if I've played too much recently; I give away bvooze I don't want to drink.

--Am I going to delete spelling mistakes? Good question. Maybe not, for the sake of blog-integrity? Or maybe I'm allowed ONLY if they're completely illegible? Let's say: no spell-checkinf for now.--

Aw jeeze.

Back to it: I edit a lot. I overthink what I write. I have drafts of twenty different thinfgs sitting in a folder on my desktop—many of which will never be read by anyone because they're no longer timely. If I'm not allowed to press delete" (missed the open bracket there), then I can't really overthink things, can I? I can go back on what I said if I change my mind, but what's on the page is on the page.

I like the idea that doing things this way gives me plenty of permission to be wrong. This is not researched. This is not planned (OK that might not be true in the future). This is just what I think on Sunday. Maybe by putting it in writing, I'll get more opportunities to correct the things I'm wrong about.

Maybe there'll be plenty of "what tf were you thinking?" moments. Hell, I hope so. Learning opportunities.

So that's what I'm doing. Every Sunday, new blog post, completely unedited. (Nice use of punctuation.)

As for today's post: I guess I won't just leave it there. I can find something to talk about.

OK, how about this: a friend posted a thing about the bad comparison of taking away cars becasue they're dangerous vs. shutting things down becasue COVID's dangerous. That's not explained well. Let me try again:

Someone (plenty of people) made the argument that life is dangerous—driving cars is plenty dangerous, as evidenced by hundreds of thousands of motor-vehicle deaths—and yet no one tells people they can't drive. So why then, are people told they can't live their life in the face of this virus?

@Science.sam had a perfectly sound explanation of the difference in situations, but I wanted to respond with a question that I inevitably decided against (I saw 300 comments, many of which were combative, and chose not to add fuel to that fire.)

But I can ask it here!

Sam mentioned that, while we don't advocate against the use of cars, we do advocate for a bunch of incredibly important safety practices that make life in cars as safe as possible—that's what we're doing with these COVID protocols: advocating for safety during a risky time.

But, to me, that's not a great parallel. The masks and social distancing and capacity limits are your safety procedures. Isn’t shutting down gyms and stores taking away the cars? Shutdowns are like saying, "there is no way to drive safely enough so we are indeed taking away your cars."

Or maybe like saying, "there's no way to be safe in this car that goes over 40mph." Either way. If you want to engage in that comparison, you have to admit that we ARE taking away people's cars because they're too dangerous. Sure—the main argument is that we're doing it to protect other people from you (not take away your own right to put yourself at risk), but that IS what's happening.

If we found out that specific makes of cars had blind-spots so big that the driver was far more likely to hit pedestrians than in any other car, maybe we would ban that car. Such is the same for bars. You're far more likely to spread germs, so you're not allowed there.

My thing here is: Sam's not wrong in advocating for government intervention and increased safety measures. I just don't like when arguments are a little disingenous or don’t address everything. (Note to self: no big words in these blogs). There's already far too much division and too many people are talking past each other, that, to me, we can't afford to draw imperfect parallels.

Is that all for today? I guess that's abvout 800 words. Pretty good for a post? Maybe some days they'll be longer. I have no idea what's in store. But I started something new. I'm into it.

I think I'll allow comments on these, if I can figure it out on Squarespace. So if you want to jump in and say, "wtf, Johnny?" please do! Learning opportunities.

Cheers <3