A Thinker in Space

It is hard to believe that after 12 years to the day I have finally reached a place of consistency with this blog. Over the years, I have grown, changed, and my perception of what this blog should be has shifted. Reviewing past posts has been interesting and enjoyable for me, and I am very excited about the direction in which this blog is headed. This post is about reflecting on the past, going over some of the updates to the website, and discussing the future.

Why do I do this?

Blogging for me has multiple purposes. First – I love to write. Blogging allows me to practice writing consistently, which is a huge bonus in a busy lifestyle. If I can keep up my writing in small projects, it makes it easier when I want to work on the big projects! Another significant reason is because I enjoy hearing feedback from the people who do read it, despite the fact that my audience is at the moment very small. It is a place to share my thoughts, and a reference point in conversation.

However, perhaps the most significant reason is that this helps build up my writing portfolio. Whenever there is freelance writing gig that I am applying for, I can use this as a reference, as I have written now a plethora of articles (and have many more to come) of varying styles (including articles that are lists, deep dives, and reviews, as well as some personal writing pieces).

What has changed?

If you’ve been here for a little while, you know what kind of content I post. But as I am in this new era (which I can say now that I have two months of consistent bi-weekly articles out), I can give a bit more clarity as to what you can expect from articles on this blog. First and foremost, whenever I publish for another company, I will share those links here (for example, this is one of my favorite published articles, a guide to the best games of 2023). I currently have no plans to write externally, but I should eventually have a few more Playsum articles coming out.

I have a new About Me page which helps to explain my blog a bit better – please check that out to again get a grasp of who I am! I also started to use the Amazon Affiliate Program, but felt that it stifled some of my content and made it look like a cash grab, so as you can see I have backed off from that significantly in recent articles.

One of the biggest changes (and one of the most exciting, in my opinion) is that I am now collecting series together in their own pages. Please take a look at this link! It is also in the header on the top of the website. I am currently working on four series: My Favorite Movies (which is wrapping up in the next two weeks!), Underrated Games (which will not be wrapping up any time soon), DC – Crisis to Flashpoint (again, not expecting to be done with this any time soon), and Deep Dives (this is more of a type of article than a series, but I am gathering them here).

Next month, I am looking forward to starting a series called Deep Cuts, where I will be writing reviews of games from my childhood, and judging whether or not they hold up against modern games/equivalents!

Back to the Beginning

On June 26th, 2012, 12 years ago today, I published my first post on this blog: A Thinker in Space. It was short, and a little bit lofty for my taste nowadays. I started this blog in high school (wow) in my Junior year, and as an adult I look back and see where I came from and sometimes I have to shake my head and laugh.

Life takes different directions than you expect, especially when you’re a Junior in high school. Back in the day, I was obsessed with Owl City, and some of that reflects here (the song Real World comes to mind when reading this). I look back and I respond with “okay kid, take it down a notch”. But that’s where I was in my faith, and I still look back and agree with most of what I said, despite my intense wording. I did not end up getting a Pastorate (who knows what God has in store, but it’s not currently in the cards), but I think this Thinker in Space would be happy with where I ended up. Happily married for 5+ years, starting a family, teaching at a Christian school, and running a Youth Group – I have been incredibly blessed to have taken the drive little me had and put it towards the kingdom in multiple facets of my life.

Back in those days, my view on culture and the world around us was black and white – to me, good and bad were obvious and 100% separable. Nowadays, I understand the world much more, and I hope that I represent that in my discussions and reviews of content.

Early on, my focus in reviewing media was much more focused on creating a parental guide for it. However, nowadays, PluggedIn does this much better than I would. My focus now is simply on reviewing content quality and hopefully providing a balanced and unique perspective on the movie, television, show, game, music, or other form of media.

I also talked about social issues a bit more in my old blog, especially at the beginning (before the first two-year gap), including my piece about Stupid by the W’s which is perhaps the most controversial work I’ve ever published. I just reread this and my response was “you might have gone a LITTLE too far” but also “…huh, he’s got a point”. This is something I don’t expect to do often in the future, as I aim to be able to work with companies with varied political and philosophical stances (though I will continue to affirm my faith through my work).

On and Off – for Years

I started the blog in 2012, posted 4 things in two days, and then gave up. Which is pretty typical of my projects in this era. In 2014, I returned, and posted 4 articles in a month. Then, gone again. In 2017, I had an inconsistent run starting with a life update called Two Years Later…, where I did my first name drop, and explained a bit more about myself. Rereading this article, my focus had changed appropriately and set the stage for my current era. My goal was to post once a week, which resulted in a 7-article run from February to early March, about a month’s worth of content, with a post roughly every four days. However, with everything going on in my life at the time, I could not keep this consistent – it was simply not a priority (fairly).

My dream is the same – I still want to write novels. I have finished my first, but need to go back and edit/rewrite many portions of it. I have married my high school sweetheart, who I mention here.

Back then, I listed my favorite movies. There have been some major changes here (if you’d like to see them, hop on over to the aforementioned My Favorite Movies list!!)

I also focused a bit more on some experimental writing pieces, like Whimsical Wonderment and Homecoming, in styles I might return to someday. There is then a year gap, and then I picked up where I left off with some music reviews (including a review of the astonishingly excellent John Mark McMillan album Mercury and Lightning)! This series once again contained 7 articles, including a review of Fortnite, my most popular article, an exposé on the Star Wars Expanded Universe in light of the changes made by the Disney buyout, and another “Where Am I Now?” article (like this one).

Again, this article is another step towards where we are now. I call myself out for inconsistency (ironically) and claim to be starting a bi-weekly streak (that lasted one month). I also once again did a bit of a retrospective on the content that I had posted before, just like I did in this post!

Four years later, I return with two posts on March 3rd, 2022. These were not posted for any other reason than to build my portfolio. Afterwards, I posted five articles I was paid pennies for that I’m not particularly proud of. I mention them in my most recent “return”, An Explanation and a New Horizon. I have since made these posts private (the only posts I have removed from my blog over the years) because they are clickbait nonsense, and if I was ever to get another writing gig, I would not want it to be anything like that (and thus I don’t want them as part of my portfolio. This was also the beginning of my relationship with Playsum, which I still occasionally may write articles for.)

I then posted 4 solid articles written for Playsum, but did not do any personal writing here. This spanned for around two years (which is pretty crazy, honestly) until late April, when I returned with yet another “I’m Back” post (if you’re counting, this is now five posts of this nature restarting the old blog). This one was called Consistency at Last? and is the beginning of my newest era. It is a very short article, as I did not want to get my hopes up too much, but since then, I have been cruising forward and enjoying every minute of my experience here.

Where To Next?

That’s a great question. For now, I expect to keep up my bi-weekly articles! I have been having too much fun to quit now. Currently, my strategy is to write a lot (like I used to) and then schedule them to post in the future. I have only run out once, and was able to catch up without missing the mark. I am publishing on Mondays and Thursdays (at the moment, Thursdays have been my Movie List days, though that series is wrapping up in two weeks!), and have a small-but-mighty audience. I hope to expand that audience in the future, but am not sure exactly how to do it, since self-promoting your blog is not necessarily received with fanfares and a line of interested parties.

I have a lot of articles planned as well, enough content to keep me going for as long as I want to do this. Will I eventually disappear into the ether again? Probably. I’m not fool enough to assume that I will be continuing this forever. But I hope to leave a solid body of work behind before my next hiatus, instead of seven articles and a “hi I’m back oops now I’m gone” post.

This is my 19th post since my return, consistently posting two times a week for 3 months now as of tomorrow. Most certainly my best streak yet. I have covered a plethora of topics and games, and am looking forward to continuing to share my thoughts on the things that come to my mind. For now, I hope you are enjoying reading what I have written, and that you are willing to accompany me as I continue to share my thoughts. Please, if you are willing, share content when you can with those who would be interested! Word-of-mouth is one of the best ways to expand my blog’s outreach, and I’d love to get more people involved in conversation here.

This blog’s existence has meant a lot to me throughout my life, and I am glad that it is preserved as a memory of where I came, and a safe place to continue to post in the future. Thank you for traveling with me on this journey back to the beginnings of this blog’s humble existence, and for moving forward with me into the future. Here’s to the next 12 years!