A few months ago. I stopped blogging. The last meaningful piece of content I produced was in January.
I did it for a few reasons:
- I thought it would force me to produce more thoughtful content. I thought, if my mind was forced to fill the distribution channel I had. I would. A good distribution channel would surely present itself.
- My words here started getting referenced by people outside a close circle of people I really trust. Reporters started referencing my writing in conversation and others got into “what I really meant by…(insert anything at all)”. I thought that if I stopped writing this would stop. As if I had somehow forgotten one of my cardinal rules. Once you put it on the internet it belongs to everyone else. It didn’t stop. They just referenced other things.
- I’m getting married. To me, this is the single biggest accomplishment of my life thus far and having a successful marriage is unforgivingly important to me. I wanted to remove some distractions. Writing, for me, I thought had become a distraction.
So I stopped blogging. In the end, I realized something that a few people who know me well will probably find hilarious and obvious.
I was wrong about all 3 things.
I have a lot of production in me.
Trying not to produce and removing writing put me into this position to point that energy somewhere. That energy consumed every episode of House I could get my hands on, Modern Family, and a considerable amount of pop journalism on nascent subjects.
I’ve become something of a Deer Hunter savant and at least a few times have become frustrated by a few peoples desire not to challenge my skills in the game.
I don’t even like guns and I don’t have cable for a lot of reasons. The strongest of which is that it’s a distraction from creating things.