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# A bit of backstory.
- URL: https://absurdia.xyz/a-bit-of-backstory/
- Published: 2026-08-05T00:13:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-28T15:35:18.000Z
- Description: History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.
- Author: Mack Simpson
- Tags: Backstory

*Absurdia* isn't my first blog-rodeo. I wrote an advertising industry blog called *"Adverb"* in the super-early Aughts, 2000 to 2006-ish. It was a modestly-popular stop for industry professionals, and even got a mention or two in the trade press.  
  
(Shout out to author [Ken Wheaton](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6949697.Ken%5FWheaton?from%5Fsearch=true&from%5Fsrp=true&ref=absurdia.xyz), formerly of Ad Age.)  
  
The death knell was a massive project I was working on at the time for one of my (then) agency's equally massive clients. Huge budget, exotic foreign location, helicopter shots, rolls and rolls and rolls of over-cranked film. The works. And I couldn't say a word about it on *Adverb*, because it was still a work in progress. And I found I couldn't say a word about much of anything else, either, with so much of my thinking being taken up by this delicious piece of admonkey commerce.  
  
So I stopped writing for it, continued with my project, shot it, edited it, and got it on the air. And, still, I didn't pick up where I'd left off with *Adverb*. I'd lost the heart for it, and it just... blew away in the dust of my life.  
  
And then Facebook happened, and no one gave a shit about anything else, anyway.  
  
When I got the notion to pick the blog-pen back up once again, I knew I didn't want to do it like I had with *Adverb*, with its breaking news, gossip, and APIs pulling in the latest and greatest from the ad world. Self-hosted, too. Too much work; too many things to break and need fixing; it was too much, *too much*.  
  
I cast around for a different blogging platform and landed on [Ghost](https://ghost.org/?ref=absurdia.xyz). In building *Absurdia* here on the Ghost platform, everything has felt *lighter*, and *easier*, and somehow *cleaner*. Now, admittedly, I've chosen a feature-light design, so it *should* feel like all those things, but it also felt *familiar*. Why did it *feel familiar?*

Which brings me to the point of this entry: I was one of the original backers of Ghost on Kickstarter back in 2013\. [My name is written into the changelog of Ghost's 0.3 Kerouac release.](https://ghost.org/changelog/launch/?ref=absurdia.xyz) And I'd forgotten all about it. Go figure.  
  
Thirteen years later (a lucky number in the world of Ghosts, right?), something drew me back to it. I suppose that's so, because here I am. I'd somehow even managed to name my car "Ghost" during my away-time. Freaky.  
  
And also absurd.  
  
But that's another story.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/2e/f4/2ef499d4-e94b-4b36-987c-da9be1bf2b17/content/images/2026/08/M-smallsig-2.png)