Hack Job - Blue Collar Diaries

Now what? It’s up to you.

CAMOUFLAGE

PHOTOGRAPHY

BLUE COLLAR DIARIES

CHRONOMETRY CORNER

What the fuck is the Hack Job?

I created the Hack Job as a lark, a dumping ground for all of my typewriter-born musings, and a medium for the minutia of a slightly peculiar hobby. And if for some inexplicable reason it resonated with someone stumbling upon this website, it would be an unexpected happenstance.

I am reluctant to publicly admit my fascination with typewriters, mostly because of the incredulous and sometimes mocking reactions such a confession generates. As a result I reasoned that an anonymous blog would be a safer alternative for my need to talk type.

Those who do find out about my interest in typewriters may not say as much, but it’s easy to discern that they believe it to be an obsession. In my mind it’s a harmless peccadillo, one that doesn’t define who I am, nor represent all of my varied interests in life.

It all ended up being a moot point. The Hack Job didn’t really work out: All of my modest attempts at typewriter photography were limited to a Tumblr page (44 Keys), and I began to post any typewriter-related prose on a dedicated website (ClackAttack!).

As a result I really didn’t have much use for this blog, which is why it quickly fell into disuse and turned into just another redundant presence on the internet, looking every part a dalliance turned into failed experiment.

Many years ago – too many it now seems – during the infancy of the internet, I created a website that was a generic repository for all of my on-a-whim prose. It was called the ‘Blue Collar Diaries’ which was a tongue-in-cheek label: I actually detest diaries and the spilling of private day-to-day events that sickeningly chokes the Internet like unrefined oil leaking from supertanker. “To write a diary every day is like returning to one’s own vomit,” Enoch Powell once observed, a sentiment that effectively encapsulates my thoughts on the subject.

What I enjoyed most about Blue Collar Diaries was that it was an open platform for my thoughts. Free of any subject regulation, it allowed me to share whatever it was that I happened to be mulling over at the time. I miss having such an outlet, and now seems like a good time to repurpose (or reboot, to use a more trendy term) the Hack Job into such a multipurpose blog. Undoubtedly, it will still contain some typewriter content, and at least each entry will be guaranteed to have been written using one. 

It is with this post then that I am officially announcing a change in direction; from this moment forward the Hack Job will remain true to its descriptive by-line, it will actually be the “collected ramblings of a barren mind.”