Shifting Focus

This is my 212th blog entry.

You know I originally started this blog as an effective way to communicate my travels and reflections overseas to friends and family back home. In Taiwan (the pre-blog daze), I found sending emails to everyone both cumbersome and very time consuming. And so this humble blog was set up upon return to Canada and I ended up using it quite a bit during my eastern Europe adventures. I think it has served it's purpose wonderfully.

But now I'm in Waterloo, Ontario... and have been, coming up to a year now. Not sure if my epic travels to Guelph, Brantford or Hamilton hold the same level of excitement as Russia or the Far East.... (Well, perhaps Hamilton ;-) ). So this blog needed to change it's focus.

I've resisted turning it into a personal day-by-day, please-feel-my-pain-and-joy journey and the reason is simple. I consider myself a very private person and that stuff stays with me and a very small circle of trusted friends. This is not an indictment of personal blogs, I have friends who blog in that way, it's just not for me. Besides, we now have applications like Facebook, that more than suffices my need to express the day to day stuff, etc...

And so this blog has sort of evolved into a platform for expressing my thoughts and viewpoints on the world. Lately, it's been perhaps too exclusively focused on Bush-bashing, Don Imus and a little known Russian statue in Estonia. But I've enjoyed expressing my views and, especially bringing forward those clips or articles that I think are important to the condition of our world. If I had a wish though, I wish I'd have greater interest and curiosity of the world.... of insight into more social issues.... to have more opinions of controversial topics.... but I don't. My interests are limited to... my interests.

I sometimes get frustrated how narrow the scope of my blog has become. But it is what it is, I suppose...

So having said all that, there is one aspect of this blogging thing that has, quite frankly, surprised me. It's been a terrific sandbox for working on my writing skills - to be able to accurately express my inner thoughts into actual words, sentences and paragraphs. To develop a voice, my voice... You know there's a real aspect of fulfillment and self actualization that I did not expect. It's a great drug!

And I have much to learn and feel so excited when I look down this road. I did not plan for this writing thing to ignite me like it has, but it has. And I am grateful.

So what is the point of this blog entry? What the hell am I rambling on and on about ... ?

Well... it's this: I've decided to shift my focus from blogging to writing... Specifically, to write fiction, create stories, characters, and situations. I want to explore so many aspects - whether it short stories, novels, or plays.

I want to connect my need for creativity, with my joy of writing.

My goal.... is to become published.

And so I will be committing much of my focus and attention (including my "blogging" time) towards that objective. And this excites me to no end. It also scares me (and therefore, another reason why I have to do this).

You see life has taught me that without commitment, you cannot achieve. And without a goal, you cannot have focus.

So if I'm going to do this and hold down my job, responsibilities, etc... then much of this blog has to give. It's really a no brainer for me.

While I'm not shutting down this blog entirely, it will be going dark. If an issue come up that moves me, I will comment on it - but I really don't expect that to happen very often.. If I decide to head off for another year abroad (which is certainly among my future plans), you can be sure this blog will be ripe with activity once again.

So until such time...

TTFN