Rolling Out the Changes

"Changes in latitudes,changes in attitudes
nothing remains quite the same."
- Jimmy Buffett, Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes

I mentioned in my last post that I would be making some changes. What you see here are the beginnings of those changes. There are some you may like and some you may not. There are some that I will probably not even end up liking. As someone, somewhere once said, "That's life in the big city."

I am working on a couple of writing projects right now, but one of them has taken on a life of its own and grown far beyond what I originally intended it to be. I do hope to post it here soon (that is, if it doesn't grow to book length before I have finished with it, or rather before it is finished with me).

I originally planned to link to an old post I wrote about the Superman archetype, since this project that had begun to really come to life originally grew from that post, but as I read the original writing, I was struck by the thought that my thoughts were strongly rooted in the particular time in which it was written, even if it was only about a year ago, that the bulk of it is now totally out of context. It was like reading a signal from some lost and dying world that is transmitted to us, here in the present, across the void of space, yet when we receive it, too much time has passed to reach those people. The cataclysmic event has already taken place.

That seed of an idea, which took root from a post by my favorite lost blogger Seiche (where have you gone old friend?), in turn sprouted a huge research and writing project on superhero archetypes, which in turn led to the growth of my current exploration.

As I read the post, and was struck by that sense of anachronism, it occurred to me that this feeling was somehow strangely appropriate. What I already knew was reinforced. We look to heroes, saviors, appropriate to our times. We want to be saved from the abyss by someone who can meet us where we are and take us where we need to be.

"Yesterdays are over my shoulder,
So I can't look back for too long.
There's just too much to see waiting in front of me..."
- Jimmy Buffet, Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes

I'm Alive

"Thinking about the time I've wasted
And the pleasure we once tasted
Looking up and down this road
I've been here before..."
- Jackson Browne, I'm Alive

Contrary to how I've made it appear by not writing anything here for about the last 6 months, I am alive and well. Actually, I'm doing much better now than I was while I was writing here regularly. The truth is, life caught up with me and I had to answer its call and live as fully as possible. I needed to cut down the number of hours I was spending in front of a computer monitor and do some other things. Now, I am looking forward to starting over. I will be changing my format a bit, possibly on a new blog (that I will link here if I choose to go that route).

“It's no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” - Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland

At any rate, I plan to start writing again. I'm not yet sure what form it will take, but I recently read something that affected me greatly. I was reading the introduction to something (I know longer remember what) and the author warned the readers (myself included) that this work was going to be different from everything that went before. The difference, according to that author, was that everything she had previously written, she had written for the benefit of other people. Sure, she was expressing deeply heartfelt and emotional things, baring her soul, and receiving the healing that brings, but her actual writing was never for her. The finished product was always written for the reader response. She would check her feedback, comments on her website and blog, she would fret about the number of people who were reading, agonize over those who criticized her work, and celebrate over those who loved it. At some point, she realized that what she truly needed to do was to write for herself. She wrote that if you write to please yourself, the reading audience would take care of itself.

At that point, I realized why I had become uninspired and stopped writing.

Now, I am ready to begin anew. So, if my blog is less friendly, more impersonal for readers, that is the reason. You see, I am no longer doing this because the approval of a community of readers makes me feel better about myself. I am writing because I have a story that wants to be told.

I am doing this for me.

"Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite?" - Mr. Blonde, Reservoir Dogs