After I had told a number of stories, I began to realize that there were a couple problems. First, there was the time problem – I picked a spot in the past as a place to start, because it was logical, and a great introduction – but it also left me with a huge amount of material to cover, when sometimes all I wanted to do was talk about the present. As a result, I branched out and added another blog with fresher material. Then there was the content problem – when I began blogging, everyone’s posts were loooooong. Average posts at the time were easily 2000 words plus. Today, with the advent of Twitter, and other such devices, posts are 162 characters; and only the best can expect someone to read a post over a thousand words. I’m not going to bemoan the evolution of content – in some respects it’s easier to write a 500 word piece than a 2000 word piece. I also shouldn’t complain about something I can’t fight, just like gravity. (http://www.lastadventurer.com/last-adventurers-fieldnotes/2010/2/22/interregnum-the-problems-behind-the-great-content-absence-of.html). Also, I can't honestly say that things were horrible or worse when I posted less content.
The third problem was almost the blog killer. Writing this blog was taking away from my dream. You know, that dream to be a writer. Sure, blogging is writing, and writing can be used to blog, but when I say that I wanted – and want to be a writer, I mean that I want to write about the worlds in my head that exist in no known dimension. My dream is to tell those stories – and this blog was taking away from that, if not preventing it. It was preventing it because, surprisingly, there is not enough time in the day to do everything, what with having a real job, and doing real mundane things. This problem was the back-breaker, along with the fear, and the complacency, and while I pondered it, time wasted too fast.
Fortunately, seven hundred and seventy seven days is a lot of time to ponder a solution. It would have been easy to walk away from this, and just focus solely on writing about those imaginary worlds. That solution was unsatisfying to me. Sure, it was practical, but in my experience as a writer, nothing is ever that simple. There may be days where it is unerringly easy to write about mythical mountains and lost lands, but there may also be days where one simply wants to talk about how that last Thursday was completely ridiculous. Also, there’s that nagging desire to be known, and that pesky feeling of having something to contribute to the information overload of the world.
My solution was that I’m going to keep the blog for now as an outlet, but things are going to change. By now, you already know enough about me, so I’m going to move away from the backstory. (http://www.lastadventurer.com/last-adventurers-firering/). Having said that, there’s probably going to be a point where I want to finish telling some stories of back in the day, and I will – so, if you’re that interested, check in occasionally to see if there’s anything new. The main area, here, is going to be a lot different. It’s going to be non-linear, for starters – and it’s going to talk about things other than just adventuring around. Shocking, I know.
Never fever, however, there still will be plenty of talk about adventuring. It’s just going to be different talk, in that there will be more of a focus on photographs. While photographs aren’t memories, they’re great for capturing the unique – and for inspiring and aiding people to do many things, including get out and see these things in what time they have, and in what time the things have. Photographs are great timeslices. In conjunction with more visual images, there’s going to be less text – because less text equals less time, and frankly, because that’s what people want in a blog these days. I know there are probably at least one or two doubters out there, wondering if I can keep my posts under five hundred words, but frankly, I think I’m up for the challenge. This is not to say there won’t be longer stories, because eventually, I’d like to incorporate snippets of those far off places of the mind here, but overall, things will be short and sweet. My analogy at this point is that for the first five years, this blog has been in two dimensions – words, and more words – and has followed the line of time. In its new iteration, it’s moving to three dimensions – words, memories, and photos, and is going to navigate the stream of time between the present and the past as it chooses. So, strap yourself in, mythical reader, because the ride is going to be interesting, and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I have and will.
-the LA