Hi there! If there's anyone still checking.
If so, Welcome Back and I applaud and appreciate your tenacity/stubbornness in reading this site. Enjoy it while it lasts - I've made promises to keep churning out content before, only to have huge gaps in the timeline. Which is better than just leaving an abandoned site with the last entry in the early 2010s, I guess.
It's been quite a year, for everyone. Since my last entry, my grandmother died from complications related to Covid and my mother died two months ago in her sleep from a hemorrhage, in addition to other friends who didn't make it out of 2020. A year later, after declaring that 'We Won Covid, Now Get Back To Work™', and 'Back To Normal®', news of the Delta Variant (more contagious) becoming the main strain this Fall/Winter comes along in tandem with the Slow Death of American Democracy ramping up for Act 1.
Those are really good reasons for not providing content, but there were/are plenty others around before 2020 got underway, as we all can guess from the figurative digital wreckage on the lamented 'Information Superhighway'. As the saying goes, "Ass, Gas or Grass - Nobody Rides For Free" and it's as true in the digital realm as it is in the Real World - Personal Data is the coin of the realm, and it's even better when people give up their data without any coercion involved.
It was pretty charming, at first, sharing your life and finding other like-minded people out there - there are still online friendships that I maintain & cherish that, frankly, would not have happened otherwise. And that's the one thing that keeps that hesitation in cutting the cord/plug still alive, despite the increasing evidence that it would be a Good Thing in the long run.
At this point - over 50, aged/aging out of hipster entertainments & eateries and misanthropic in my best moods - isolating from Everything will merely hasten the pace of the slow death path I can say that I'm officially on. Not overstating for effect - having helped take care of aging relatives for the last 25 years, you recognize the landmarks and signs; and I've seen time & time again how it ends when you insist on ignoring them. So... hey. There It Is.
Facebook also kinda killed the need - why spend time attempting to write (hopefully) coherent and/or entertaining things when guerrilla hit-and-run entries get the job done too? Fortunately, never got into the Twitter mindset and as for TikTok/Vine/Whatever Else - "OK, Grandpa." Proudly.
So - wanting to stretch those longer-form writing muscles with the Specter of Death hovering around. Easy to understand. And coming to terms that it's not going to probably change things at this point, except in improving my mental health - I've written off and on over the past 25 - 30? years now, but not made any sort of living from it. Not having that burning drive to pursue it like my life depended on it and not really understanding how the game is played... not that it matters now.
But the well isn't quite dry yet. So, I'll try my best to wring out what's left; a good portion of stuff was for publications that no longer exist or are extremely hard to find except for the dedicated reader of physical media - some of that will be dredged up to see light again (unless it's judged to be completely horrible). There'll also be newer things - the film reviews I do can be found over at 366 WeirdMovies from time to time, but there'll be some spillover for things that don't quite fit there; the sister blog on music, Music Snob, is getting a workover and refocus, so the music stuff will end up over there.
And I guess we'll all see how this goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment