Jeremy C Kester

Through the many years that I’ve been writing, there has been a consistent theme of indecision. Behaviors vary wildly as I go back and forth between whether or not to focus on one thing or another. Do I treat writing as a profession or a hobby? How much effort should I spend? How much time? What do I do when I can do neither? What about when I don’t feel like it? What do I even write?

These are all questions that have been in deliberation for the better part of two years, ever since my year of writing in 2018 where I wrote for almost 8 months straight, every day, 1000 or more words, without many misses (fewer than 6), before it was derailed by vacation and a major family incident. Even before that though, there were always questions on what was being chased. How important was blogging? Social media? Should the focus be 100% fiction writing? If blogging is important, how frequent should I post? What topics do I want to discuss?

Answers to these have been elusive at best, driving behaviors that are anything but consistent. And in hindsight, it also makes the explanations for each movement made ridiculous in how they sound. But this is a journey. Each stumble (as what preceded now barely constitutes anything more than stumbling) puts the journey closer to the path. One can argue that there is a destination, or that there should be. Is there? Should there be? Is the goal to end somewhere or is it rather a continued slog through the adventure of writing? The latter is where the compass points. As such, I have to keep moving forward in one manner or another, trying each time to be a little better in some way than before without giving up too much ground.

To be honest, these last two years have been in many ways a journey to get back to the path. Causes as to why the path was lost are far and wide— plentiful— a cornucopia of excuses if you will. It matters little to list them or debate them other than for self reflection, which has its uses… in private. For discussion here, it does little to serve the purpose.

What is worth discussing here is what the hell is planned for the blog and the site? With it having been dormant except for the occasional post and the occasional short story, along with the experiments like Month of the Macabre, which while it did not do well (and by that it means that it did not make it beyond the first few days of October), sparked some latent desire for more stories like that in my writing.

There have been more cobwebs growing on the site than anything else. And while there aren’t many readers overall, there are a handful of people that see the posts and read them (which is very much appreciated). Something needs to be changed. It’s worth taking yet another stab at this whole thing.

Further pressure is added in that I need to do something here as all the accounts I used to have on social media have been taken down— permanently. This was a decision made in response to two things that will be discussed in another post (and actually had almost nothing to do with The Social Dilemma, which was a pretty good documentary).

Really, the thing is that I have a site; why not use it? I like to write, to blog, so as long as I find a way to keep enjoying it, it should be easy to continue to curate. What is going to be posted here will remain to be seen. It likely will be erratic for a short while as a rhythm is found. Rather than try to decide right here and now what needs to happen, I am going to let the future tell itself. Who knows how it’ll look, what topics will come up, or what pattern the posts will come. All in all, I am going to give this thing another try and see what path it takes me.