Reintroductions are in Order: Refocusing My Blog

First and foremost, happy new year!

Obviously, I’m being cheeky with the tags on this post. I’ve been posting to Steemit consistently for a few months. However, thanks largely to the inspiration I’ve drawn from the community of writers here, I’d like to refocus the main purpose of my blog. Don’t worry: you’ll still get the same kind of content you’ve been getting from me (from my philosophical and political ramblings to my musings on video games to my fiction posts). What’s different, then, you might ask? Well, I’ll likely slow down with producing that kind of stuff, but you’ll probably still end up with more content from me. Yay!

You see, at heart, I’m a fiction writer. Yes, sure, I often wax philosophical or critique some cultural artifact, but writing fiction is one of my greatest joys in life. As such, I’d like to do more of it. The problem is that, like most people, I don’t have as much time as I’d like or need. The bills come due every month, so I have to keep trading in my time and sanity for digital scrips redeemable for goods and services. It’s a vicious cycle.

So what does one do?

Get paid to write, of course!

No, I don’t mean get paid in those sweet, sweet bear market Steem tokens (Worth less every day, amirite!?). I mean, I’ll keep collecting those pennies, for sure, but I want to go big. I want to publish a novel. Then, hopefully, I’ll publish even more after that.

Uh...how does Steemit factor into this equation?

I’m glad you asked.

I want to provide regular updates about my path to publication. I’m not promising daily posts, but they will be frequent. I intend to fill you all in on what I’ve done that day (or past few days) to get me closer to my goal of getting published.

I’m not just going to give you the idealized version of the story, either. I fully intend to include my failures. So if I just can’t bring myself to work on something productive that day or week, I’ll let you know. I may not give all the gritty details of how many large pizzas I’ve shoveled into my face hole in a fit of depression or how slovenly I appear on my bad days, but I will be honest with you.

So what is the purpose of this refocusing? What do you hope to accomplish?

That answer is actually three-fold:

1. I want this blog to serve as a record of my journey.
   a) I hope that one day, people can look back and find inspiration in this journey. On the best days, I hope they find motivation to keep going; on the worst days, I hope they find comfort in knowing they are not alone in their failures. We all struggle, and I hope that we all continue to struggle on.

2. Providing consistent updates will keep me motivated to stay on task.
   a) I’ve often read about other writers’ meandering paths to success. Stephen King famously wrote of all the many, many, many rejections he received from publishers. In his memoir On Writing, King claimed, “By the time I was fourteen the nail in my wall would no longer support the weight of the rejection slips impaled upon it. I replaced the nail with a spike and went on writing.”

   b) I want to transform failures into motivation. This blog will be the spike on my wall. I intend to break those failures under their own massive weight and churn them into a passion to keep writing and chasing my dream.

3. I want to further engage with a community of writers.
   a) I’ve received invaluable practice, feedback, and inspiration from other writers on Steemit. I want to foster those connections and build more.

4. No list is complete until you’ve added more points than you said you would.
   a) The good life is all about improvisation, after all.

So, uh, what happens if you never succeed, no publisher ever picks up your work, and your entire life culminates in one pathetic and publicly embarrassing failure?

Did all the anxiety come through in that question? Yeah, I hope so. On my good days, I recognize how silly that question is, shrug it off, and keep working. Not every day is a good day, however.

Let’s start by just blindly accepting the premise of the question: that failing to achieve the dream one initially sets out with is synonymous with a failed life. It’s a faulty premise, but let’s go with it for argument’s sake.

Okay, so what? If that is the definition of failure, then most of us are failures, and most of us seem to get along just fine. I’m speaking in a grand, universal sense of life satisfaction here. Regarded in that way, I guess being a failure at life isn’t so bad. All my favorite people are failures.

Furthermore, I can fall back on the cliche that if I don’t pursue my goals, then I’m definitely not going to accomplish them, anyway. I guess one solution is to avoid setting goals altogether, and thereby forever avoid failure. But I would hardly equate a lack of failure with achieving success.

But let’s return to the initial question and pick apart how faulty it was in the first place. Let’s say I never get published. Okay. I’ll adjust and move on. I’ll refine my goals. I’ll accomplish something else along the way, and most of all, I will enjoy the journey. There is nothing left to do but keep on living, after all.

I also think this blog would be an even more fascinating record if I, in fact, never get published. It will be a testament to how hard one really must work (and perhaps implicitly how lucky one must be) to achieve a dream. I’m sure we could draw out even more intriguing analyses in the event of that outcome, but let’s save those for another day.

In the meantime, here is the mantra that will keep me going:

Failure to achieve my dream will make my life’s work into a grand spectacle of failure, a beautiful piece of art in and of itself.

This is getting kind of long. Are you going to wrap this up any time soon?

Yes, definitely.

All right, so where are you right now, and what can we expect from you going forward?

Right now, I have a complete draft of a novel. It’s rough and needs a lot of work. I’ll get into that more in the next entry on this topic.

Future posts on this journey will all bear a standard title (My Writing Journey), a (usually) unique subtitle, and the date. This way, you all can easily identify which posts will comprise the record of my progress (or lack thereof).

Wait, so will you still be posting fiction? And what about that series you were doing on capitalism like nine years ago?

Okay, first off, buddy: I don’t appreciate your tone. Second, I posted a couple of entries in that series in December, so back off. Furthermore, I only put the series on hiatus for like a month or so, not for nine years, so you can settle down.

More importantly, didn’t I already say I’ll continue posting other stuff, too? Jeez, the state of reading comprehension in this country (on the Internet? in Internetopia?) is atrocious!

You sound kind of defensive right now. Are you sure you’re all right?

Yeah, I’m good. It’s just the caffeine is wearing off, and I should probably go take a nap. That’s an important step in any journey, by the way. Naps totally contribute to progress, and never let any ignoramus tell you otherwise.

Are you done now?

Quite. Expect updates soon. I’m looking forward to sharing with you all!