The 2020s changed life immensely for just about everyone in the world. This impediment which few were expecting also came with the benefit of making the direction of my career much more clear. I spent the late 2010s in college. After that decade what was waiting in the wings would turn the world upside down including the schools getting closed down. The timing for me was great though. After completing studies I long wanted to do I was now able to focus on my own assignments. I could write full-time on the topics I wanted to talk about and that was something I had only dabbled in before.
A year prior to this a musician I knew growing up, the lead singer of the band Pedro the Lion, started a multi-album project where he talked about the childhood towns he grew up in. One album for each place he lived in. Much of my writing that I did about my growing up years started in 2021 when he was working on the second album in the series entitled "Havasu." Upon its release in 2022 I was surprised that some of his stories were somewhat similar to some of my recollections. I took this as an opportunity to compare and contrast those song lyrics with my thoughts. The album from the first set of towns he grew up in was titled “Phoenix” and I may incorporate those stories into my own personal writings as well. Since that record influenced me on more of a subconscious level I didn't think about making direct comparisons until now. I find it exciting that his project is an ongoing process that can work in parallel to this one!
My first website was a space where I could dwell on my favorite memories from the 1990s. After some time I realized that the more personal parts of that project made it convoluted by lacking one clear focus. That body of work split off into this one so that it would not go two directions at the same time. This might be the closest thing I have done to writing a book due to its longer ordered structure. I chose to not make this a traditional book mainly because I want the pages to have animation and be easier to share. My being an unknown meant that many will not take the time to read my full story. If they only want to read a page or two then this format accommodates for that. It will hopefully be clear that the context before and after the article they read is available if they want to dive in deeper.
I should probably detail what got me going on this. In 2018 I was at a concert and the person next me was asking me about what I wanted to accomplish in life. It occurred to me after this discussion that much of my current line of work wasn’t what I ultimately set out for. It wasn’t what I dreamed about before planning on my life’s path. There is this talk by Alan Watts that got me thinking; “find the thing you really want to do and do that and forget the money. Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You will be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living… that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing. Which is stupid. Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way. And after-all if you do really like what you are doing, it doesn’t matter what it is, you can eventually become a master at it. The only way to become a master is to be really with it. And then you will be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. Somebody is interested in everything and anything you can be interested in will find others.”
Much of my previous work was profit driven but with this project I want to go miles beyond short-term market value. It is so easy to get caught in that trap. Like that line from The Verve's 1997 hit "Tryna make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die" or the more optimistic and underrated Shawn Mullins deep cut "I don't reckon I'll be Makin it big, You know it's hard to get rich off a tout of coffee house gigs" And he said "yeah, but ain't it a blessin To do what you want to do..."
It is way more than a nostalgia site. I was considering going back to earn a web design certificate before 2020 happened. As I look back I can now see that it would have been too soon to re-enter school. I really needed to do a project like this instead of merely a class on learning the tech. For a while I tutored at my old high school and wondered if I should have kept doing that. In some ways I feel the writing aspect of this project allows me to do some of that kind of work except with more freedom. In a ways it’s more ideal if that makes sense. Anyway I am looking forward to where this all goes and whatever avenues it may lead to in the future. I have been so happy with the first year.
On the closing track of the first Pearl Jam album the singer who is an avid surfer builds to what I always thought was a great line “I’ll ride the wave where it takes me.” As a snowboarder and not a surfer I am used to the flexibility my boards give me. I not as versatile as a skateboard its pretty close. Some people are surprised when I tell them that it is possible to flex a board enough that it can even take you back up the hill partly. While I haven’t surfed in some time what I remember from it is you have to work within the confines of the wave.
That lyric about surfing came back to me while putting these website projects together. My thoughts have been at times random, or at least seemingly so, and perhaps some would think the approach would cause me to wander aimlessly. What it really did was give me more focus than I’ve had in years. Once everything was let out of my mind I could group and reorder the content into different websites. Going with the flow of my thoughts allowed for such a thing to happen in the first place. For most of my work I set the extremities of what it should be at the onset. Going at it in reverse leaves me completely open. This makes me wonder where the influence of this project will end?
