OK, little housecleaning is gonna go on round here. I’m at an utter crossroads, both with the blog and my vida loca in general. Feeling a bit shifty, drifty, not quite spiffy, occasionally miffy, and don’t wanna throw another tiffy.
So, in the time it took me to fashion my fourth cup of coffee of the day, I came up with three battle plans to help me out of the current funk:
A) Join a new gym.
B) Create the “Wading Book”.
C) Write the “Wading Novel”.
So, explanations and explications.
A) I joined my current gym about 18 months ago. It’s been tremendously helpful. Around the spring, though, I started to lose interest. I picked up running, which was great and is still great. Great in that “I hate every minute of it” way, but you know how it is. But to get to my gym nightly involves my 45 minute commute home, changing, then driving 15 minutes. Wasn’t making any sense. Joined a fancy-schmancy gym across the street from my office. Given what their monthly fee is, I should be rail-thin by Monday. OK, but seriously, I was making good progress, have felt a little sluggish in this area lately, and made a change. Feels good.
B) The “Wading Book” (alternative title: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Ryan’s Back Hair) will be a completely redone version of basically every article I’ve ever written. I’m gonna use my actual 9-5 skills and lay out the text and images in book format. Gonna then create an interactive PDF of the whole thing so you can access all the links as you would on the site. I’m toying with the idea of a print version, but for now I’m sticking with the interactive PDF. This is your chance to call the whole thing off: if you my readers would have no interest in doing this, believe me, I can get mentally feng shui in other ways. Hoping to get this done in 6-8 weeks. (I have no idea if this would even work as a coffee-table book, but you tell me. God knows I’m a bit close to the project.)
C) The “Wading Novel” will be an attempt at laying out all these thoughts online in a linear manner. Yes, a tough task indeed. How I will unite it all is my little secret, but sufficed to say it will take a lot of time, planning, and energy. (I wrote 16,000 words in October alone, and that was an average month for me. That’s 160,000 words I have to wade through. Luckily, I wrote them, so I know which ones are crap.)
So, where does that leaves the blog?
Well, that’s the $28 dollar question. A combination of factors had led me to believe that the 90+ minutes a day I spend on the site could be used to further my writing in new ways. I luckily have never really run out of material to write about, so it’s not like my well has run dry. I just don’t know if my daily attempts at 1,000+ humor essays is the best use of my time or this space. I sorta feel like George Lucas: I know there’s an audience out there for my work, but I’m not quite sure what it is they want. And yes, I write for myself, but since there is an audience component to this medium as well, I have to be aware that they play an integral role in the overall vibe of the site. And I wouldn’t want either side hating or ignoring the other.
So, what this means in terms of your daily fix: who knows. I might be able to post daily while desktopping the “Wading Book” and editing the “Wading Novel”. But I won’t put any pressure on myself to do so. I’m not going away by any means; I’m just trying to take the next step in what I feel this medium has to offer. It’s pretty exciting stuff.
I hope you come along for the ride.