A Few Odds And Ends

This post will be a little different than what I normally put out there.

First off..

As you may have read on my most recent ( and last ) Substack post, I’ve decided to leave that platform and put all of my newest writing here on my own website. You can’t read it there anymore – I deleted that account with ruthless efficiency. The Reader’s Digest version is that it wasn’t performing for me as I’d hoped, which is to say “at all,” and in the end it was just another social media algorithm to feed with no benefit. With that in mind, and since I’m already paying for this piece of internet real estate, I decided to spend a few days tweaking this website. After a ridiculous amount of hours over three days, I’m now able to deliver new writing to your email the same way Substack did. Actually, it may end up being better, we’ll see. So really, this entire post is a test run of sorts. I’ve tested and re-tested the functions and now there’s only one way to find out for sure how well it’s working.

Ch- Ch-Changes

I haven’t been writing a whole lot lately for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, there’s been some significant ( but good ) changes in my life over the past month or two. In December, I officially “retired” from music after twenty years. It was a great run but, more and more, I wanted to travel less and be home more to focus on family and other things around here. And then a couple of weeks ago, I decided to shut down a locally-oriented website project I’d been operating, in one form or another, since 2012. 

Those two things were such a large part of my life, and for so long, that they left a mental vaccum of sorts. It’s been kind of an… I don’t know, “identity shift” might be the term? After all, when something is such a large part of your life for so long, and, let’s face it, defines you, letting that part of yourself go takes a little time. As a result, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time thinking, “Okay, now what,?” Though recently, I’ve come to the realization that I don’t have to figure it all out right now. So I’ve been taking things one day at a time, adjusting to a somewhat quieter life. As a result, I haven’t made myself sit down and write on a regular basis. 

And believe me, it’s not that I don’t have a lot on my mind, I certainly do. But more often than not I catch myself asking, “Is this even worth writing about?” Especially when it comes to current events. Does the world really need one more person pontificating online what they think about a topic? Does anyone really care? But also, it seems to me that everyone is pretty well dug in on what they think about most things. And let’s be honest, I’m not gonna sway any opinions, even if I wanted to. So while I haven’t had any hesitation to touch those proverbial third rail topics in the past, lately I’m perfectly happy to avoid them altogether. 

I’ve had a couple topics floating around in my head for a while now, but for some reason, writing about them doesn’t feel right. Honestly, they feel a little too… I wouldn’t say “personal”, necessarily. It just doesn’t feel like something I feel like I need to share with the world. Which might make me a hypocrite, because my advice to others has long been to “bleed onto the page.” Yet here I am, reluctant to do so myself. Sure, there once was a time I’d have opened an artery of ink like that without hesitation. But I’ve pulled back from that practice, especially as of late. I’m sure a lot of it aligns with my desire to kind of withdraw from the world, something I may actually write about soon. 

To Sum It All Up…

TL;DR – This is a test post LOL

Seriously though, I just want to add that I took the liberty of taking the subscribers list from Substack and migrating that here. If, for whatever reason, you don’t want to get these emails you should be able to unsubscribe directly through the notification email you received ( at least I hope you did ). Or you can message me and ask me to remove you. No hard feelings, I promise.

Talk soon.