HEY!

Remember when I updated this blog?

2 years and 5 weeks ago, I quit my job of 5 years, moved out of the basement I was living in, and tried out living in NH with 2 of my best friends. This blog started as a way to document me taking the plunge into vacation-life. It was a way to show my friends at Apple what I was doing (and make them jealous)- that I wasn't just hanging out and sleeping all day. And it was a way to keep track of my life in a way I could fully control and explore. And perhaps most importantly, it was a way of reminding myself to do my best to be more awesome than I was.

Initially, nearly everything I did deserved a blog post. Some posts were "I went swimming today, here are pictures." I very quickly realized that this blog was basically a collection of pictures I took when I did things, whether they were things worth writing about or not.

Over time, it became more of a replacement for facebook. Does a party really warrant a "I changed my life for the better" post on a blog called "A life more awesome?" Probably not. But it was easier and more fun to post the pictures in blog format instead of a facebook photo album. As time has gone on, I've clearly updated this less and less. In fact, regular readers will agree here- it's basically become a mixture between hiking recaps/guides and facebook photo albums.

Some of that has to do with people reading it less, and the excitement wearing off. Not working has become my regular day to day life, and people don't necessarily care about everything I do. Last fall, I entertained the idea of having a separate blog for essays- stuff I wanted to rant or rave about that didn't necessarily fit the theme of this blog. But I never did it. I was stuck in a weird "does anyone care? Do I even care?" funk.

And sadly, I fell into the same depressed, "I don't want to do anything" lazy hole I fall into every winter, and I just stopped updating it all together. I didn't even pretend. I've listed out albums of the year for the next year, I've done a bunch of art that I was saving for a post and still haven't posted, and I'm now up to like 7 hikes that I took pictures of and kept note of key things to write about. But I just haven't. I wasn't excited about the blog. I felt that unless I got comments on here or at least likes on facebook, nobody was reading it. And if nobody was reading it, what was the point of continuing to update it? The fact that it should be for me- the fact that keeping a blog like this is a way of having everything important to me documented forever- the idea of looking back on my life and reminiscing as well as seeing growth towards becoming more of an awesome person- that was all lost on me. I just got lazy, bored, and started to think of the blog in all the wrong ways.

This babble entry is to say that I'm officially going to start writing in this blog again. You may not care. Honestly, most of the posts will be about hikes. I have a weird love/hate relationship with hiking, and somehow in the last 2 years, hiking has become a real passion to me. I'm still planning on hiking all the 4000 footers in NH, and am still unhappy with a lot of the online guides I've found for hikes in the area. I want to use this blog to help anyone who may find it by giving good guides and recaps for the other people like me who research the shit out of hikes they're about to go on.

I'm also going to try very hard to have more art and more music stuff on here. I'm debating trying to sell some of my art, and have been working (not enough) since November on a solo album where I play every instrument. Part of the reason for the blog was to have it help to keep me focused on stuff like that. It hasn't done that for awhile, but rather than give up on it, I'm going to simply try again. I got into the mindset that unless it was a huge accomplishment or a big party that would ensure a lot of views, it wasn't important. But fear not, those who care- it will still document the big weekends and parties that I attend- because they're important.

I guess not much has really changed, I just wanted to write again and say to the few people who really paid attention to this thing: just as lives change and have ups and downs, so do blogs. And I'm ready to start this up again.

It also makes a lot of sense to start blogging again now that my never-ending summer of awesome is officially coming to an end. Money is very low and I just spent several hours doing something I haven't really done in 7 years- writing a resume. I hope to have a job by August (if I don't, I'm in trouble), and the only way to keep the blog alive and keep reminding myself of not just mine, but everyone's ability to make things more awesome and live on the positive side of things is to keep blogging through the process of what became normal over the last 2 years dying.

But that's just the point- it's not going to die. I have something awesome planned for the next 2 months of weekends, and a lot of 4000 footers left to conquer. So, my life is about to change a lot and the content of this blog probably will too, but I'm going to try my damned hardest to keep living a life more awesome. Sometimes just typing this stuff out really brings the feelings home- I absolutely feel like a different person after these last 2 years, and there's no reason I have to go back to being a miserable, overly sarcastic prick who does nothing but go to work and play on the internet. I struggle to not be that person every day, and I think it's taken me writing this out to realize just how much writing this blog helps.

Blog round 2, begin.