Politics is a part of life, but it doesn’t have to overtake our lives
Back when I published a few digital magazines on Medium, it didn’t take long to learn that political writing didn’t fit all that well with my vision for what the magazines should be. Politics was an important topic to me, as it should be to everyone, but it was often so toxic and volatile that it contaminated the rest of the work. Ultimately, I created a separate publication just for my political writing, and opened it up to others. For a time, it was an effective outlet, then the country elected an orange buffoon and I put my head under the covers and stopped reading any news, or commenting on it.
Eventually, I closed down all my publications and essentially abandoned Medium, for other reasons. I created my own blog, that I hosted and maintained, which was great, as I was now in complete control of my content, but once again, soon had the same problem. While I occasionally wanted to write about politics, I didn’t want people to think that was all I was about, and these stories seemed to come in waves so that upon a brief glance at my website, at any given time, you might think that was all I wrote about.
I briefly considered creating another website, but I’m sort of sick of creating new websites every time I have a thought or a new idea. Instead, I created a subdomain, with the hope that I could create a different partition within my own identity. It also offered me the chance to build a website from scratch, which I had been meaning to do anyway. Eventually, I want to take that same structure and design and apply it to my main site.
It was easier than I thought, which is oddly fortuitous and incredibly gratifying. It’s still a work in progress, but I have now deleted all the political stories from my main site, and transferred them all to the subdomain. It needs work, and some better branding, but it appears to be structurally sound and already aesthetically better and easier to read. I’m excited about the idea of being free from themes and trying to constantly customize the design of others. In a world overrun by AI slop, it’s practically analog.
For those of you looking for an escape, I’ve made this a safer place to do just that. For those of you who are interested in our political predicament, there’s a place for you as well. Some of you may choose to visit both.
Here then, is my new subdomain, as yet unnamed but simply identified as a sub: https://politics.davidtoddmccarty.com
