Today marks 8 years since I first started my blog. I hesitate to call it a blogaversary this year because I don’t really think 2 posts in a year let’s me count it as a strong continuing effort. No matter, I am not one to leave well enough alone and let beloved projects die. The blog may have a DNR in place, but I’m going to toss that aside like on some crazed medical procedural show, and scream, “Live DAMMIT” as a pound away at its chest with a Shatner-style two-handed punch.
Anyway, here are my thoughts on closing out 2013 and launching into 2014 (I didn't say it was a timely Shatner-style two-handed punch).
2013 was a different kind of year. I managed to have a lot of fun and do some awesome stuff (often accompanied by The Shoebox Chef), but it still feels mostly like it was a year of preparation. It’s almost like I was building a foundation from which bigger things can happen.
This past year saw my workload and professional life change dramatically, my office layout finally start to make sense, and several years’ backlog of posters jump onto my walls. There were some lowlights, but there were more highlights. Some of them include:
- A fun CES wrapped up with a great night at 5 O’clock Somewhere
- My first cruise in February as part of the awesome JoCo Cruise Crazy program
- A very pleasant chat with Walter Koenig at Emerald City Comicon
- Seeing the Doubleclicks live on at least 3 separate occasions
- Seeing Chris Hardwick perform twice
- Travelling to Bend, OR, to see Cake and Sigur Ros perform and enjoy some amazing microbrews over a long weekend
- Standing under an actual Saturn V rocket
- Guesting on the Caffeinated Comics podcast several times
- Combining a work trip to check check out a Blake Shelton concert with a weekend getaway in San Francisco and experiencing the Tonga Room in all its Tiki glory.
- Some conversations with recruiters about my earning potential
- My first ever Star Trek convention where I got to chat with George Takei and Gary Graham and briefly meet Gates McFadden, Robert Picardo, Kate Mulgrew, Avery Brooks, and, of course, William Shatner
- Finally dealing with a busted Keurig
- Attending the premiere of Joss Whedon’s “Much Ado About Nothing” and catching the panel discussion
- Learning basic audio editing
- An appearance on air on QVC
- Seeing Macklemore perform
- Seeing John Hodgeman perform
- Upgrading the TV
- Meeting Marian Call
- Learning to appreciate Scotch, Whiskey,and Bourbon
And that’s the funny thing about the brain. That list of 20 items probably represents at least 45 days of awesome things that happened, since many were multi-day. That meant that something awesome was happening almost every week. That makes for a pretty exciting year. And I need 2014 to be even better? Is that greedy?
No. It’s not. Unless the singularity happens in the coming decades, I’ve only got another 150-200 years on this planet to look forward to. There are so many things I want to do that I’ll never have time to get to. But I’m going to try. And each subsequent year needs to be just a little bit better than the one before.
I do believe my brain is lying to me about 2013 and other years being dull and having nothing happen. It’s interesting how blogging impacts that. For years I had an intense chronicle of the things I was thinking/doing. Those hundreds of posts stared back at me as a stark reminder of what I’d done and thought.
The past couple years, it got away from me. I posted less text. I uploaded fewer pictures. A lot of what I was doing made it’s way over to Facebook in an abbreviated form. Many others made it to the drafts folder.
In general, I wrote less. I think major changes at work, and an increase in workload sapped more of my energy away from personal writing. Will work have less of an impact as I settle into the new normal? I have my doubts.
As is often the case, I became my own impediment to creating content. The more I blogged, the better I had to be at it. Writing simple, short posts was no longer cutting it. Doing it right mattered, but there was no time and no energy for that.
And that brings us to today, 8 years since I started this project. Perhaps I’ll finish off those drafts this year. Perhaps I’ll just throw more stuff up here more quickly.
Or maybe I’ll just be too busy having adventures to chronicle them all.
