Retrospective

Being time to haul in the anchor of 2010, I am mindful of the woeful state of this online journal. It seems a good time to reconsider my approach to this website, and consider possible changes that will work better.

Six months ago, I set off on a new mission, I had no clear expectations or singular goals, just the motivation to discover/invent^[1] a new pattern of independent creative work that resonated on a deeper level with my experience. If you’d asked me then, I would have told you that a collection of short stories was my leading focus, along with various code projects.

Through these interceding months, most of my time has been spent writing, editing, and coping with the torpid hangover of a moderate mental breakdown. Though I didn’t plan for things to turn out this way, I continue to be thoroughly absorbed by a certain fictional world that goes by the working title of Muturangi.

I’m hungry, excited, eager for resolution, but I’m trying to stay patient, mindful of the time it takes to craft a long-form novel to a standard of quality that satisfies my expectations. Being back in New Zealand has crystallized a lot of nascent ideas, necessitating the continuation of a rather epic spiral of rewriting.

The lack of activity here is less a signifier of laziness and procrastination, more evidence that the format is not an appropriate match for my current interests and goals. Increasingly, as my attitudes and skills change and develop, I am starting to enjoy a different kind of writing which is at odds with the polemical tech frenzy that has characterized so much of my work over the past few years.

Twitter has played its part too. In many respects, this is yet another niggardly post noting that microblogging has detracted from the frequency and velocity of the subject’s short form writing. That’s certainly true, but there’s much more too it than that.

It is great to have this completely open ended platform where I feel free to write anything, but over time, lack of constraints begets a lack of focus.

Rather than drop it altogether or let it continue to stagnate, in the coming year I’ll be experimenting with some major changes to the structure of this website. This will probably involve elements of personal social networks as well as an increased emphasis on promoting the literature projects I have been working on. You can assume this development will happen cheek by jowl.

1. I am often frustrated by the lack of a useful English word that coheres the relationship of discovery and invention in a single concept.