You Used to be About the Music, Man.

I never really intended it to be like this. In no way am I ungrateful, but the last thing I ever expected to achieve this year is a modicum of success. This year has been an incredibly wild experience between the Defending the Indefensible series, the writing of several books, getting published online and in print several times, and actually being oddly in demand for my talents as a film writer. Is it really bragging if I never expected it to end up this way? I am eternally humbled by the success of this blog, but most of it has admittedly been thanks to my film writing.

If one were to go back to the beginning of this blog they would find that the original intention of this blog was to write about personal experiences with the occasional film review. They would find a lot of promises and schedules I never followed through on. It was never a matter of me being bored with the previous blog format. Some of it was admittedly being lazy, but that almost seems natural to me at this point. When you write for a living about one certain thing and you spend all day doing it, by the time you find a moment to write all the things you wanted to write about, you just don't want to.

In essence, I have kind of unwittingly sold out and typecast myself. Watching films and reviewing them has become something that is very quickly starting to pay the bills. All the personal stuff that I get a lot of satisfaction writing about, doesn't pay for anything. There really isn't that much of a hook that could necessarily get people to care all that much about. Not yet, anyway.

The other day a friend stopped me and asked whatever happened to my "Open Letters to Ex-Girlfriends" series of blogs. I told her that I wasn't really sure what was going on with it. I never really abandoned it and the next entry has been half finished for close to five months now. I told her that I just never have time to get things to the point where I am comfortable releasing them. The same goes for the "Music/Movies and Memories" blogs. The day job doesn't take up all my time, but to keep it up takes a lot more work than one would think.

She was pretty disappointed and she wasn't the only one. I previously thought that no one really cared what they thought of my more personal work, but it shocks me how many people paid attention to those entries. She asked if the neglect of the blog was because I was scared of my public perception taking a beating for what I would write. I told her that was never the case. In fact, I am just as comfortable sharing personal details of my life now more than ever.

Let's go over a couple of things right now that are pretty personal in bullet point form:

-My most recent relationship took an astounding nose dive.
-My living situation, which previously sucked, is now a bit better, but not the most ideal.
-I am deathly worried about the next month or so because it is the ultimate "make or break" time for me as a writer.
-That Nightmare on Elm Street history that I wrote the other day I honestly thought was pure shit, but I finished it like a high schooler the night before it was due because I felt obligated to do it. (The good news is the next entries in that series will be better, and probably filled with more facts that people don't readily know.)

I just felt that a "state of the blog" address was in order for those who have been writing or talking to me and wondering just what the deal was. So regarding certain series that I said I would continue:

-The memory related section will resurface in late September when I have more time to figure stuff out. Same with the Ex-Girlfriends series.
-The "Hey, Remember That Movie?" series will return sooner than one would think. There were two entries that I had written that were scrapped but might be reworked. A new entry could appear within the next 48 hours or so, but don't take my word for it. The "Burnout Movie Club" (which has stayed pat since November) will be more or less absorbed into this category, with the more obscure titles being featured here at a later date.
-The Summer of 1989 series has actually been evolving into something a lot bigger. After the Ghostbusters II piece got over a hundred thousand hits (as opposed to the average of 450 hits that my personal blogs get), I realized that I had to step my game up. Those are going to continue and everything is still on, but that is going to become a book that I am working on. I want to keep the series sequential, but thanks to getting personal interviews with a lot of people involved with these films, I have been working on them out of order. The Batman entry is still admittedly an outline right now. That series will return and continue simply when I have time to finish Batman. I started in order and I want to keep it more or less the way it was.

The next month or so, this will almost exclusively be for film related purposes. Sorry. That's just the way the cards have fallen. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up as to what was going on.

And most importantly and above all else to thank all of you who helped get this blog recognized. Without each and every one of you I would not be doing a job that gives me as much joy as this does. It is incredibly humbling and absolutely amazing. You guys are the best and I applaud you. Hopefully I will have many more awesome things for you guys in the near future.