Where am I?

Two years is a long time between posts. Yet I used to remember a time when I posted more often. I used to think of myself as a blogger. I mean, what happened?

First, the numbers:

• 4 posts in 2016
• 3 posts in 2015
• 4 posts in 2014
• 0 posts in 2013 (holy moley)
• 8 posts in 2012

2012 is when I started this blog, nickcoding.com. But I blogged before, way before. In my other blog, the one I maintained for many, many years, the one I started in the  early days of blogging, I had a lot more posts.

• 4 posts in 2014
• 4 posts in 2013
• 15 posts in 2012
• 58 posts in 2011
• 113 posts in 2010
• and it goes back all the way to 2004...

Wait, what? I went from 113 posts per year to basically 0. So why?

I guess my life changed a lot. Things seemed easy for a long time. I was young and optimistic. I thought people would want to hear what I had to say. I thought the world was my oyster, that I had unlimited possibilities ahead of me. Then reality set in. Things started to get hard. My view of the world and the opportunity in that world began to shrink. I had mounting responsibilities. I had setbacks. I started to realize life wasn't such a cakewalk. I started to realize I wasn't actually good at what I did, or at least there were a lot of people who were a lot better. I went on the defensive and I stayed there. Why would anyone give a shit about what I had to say? So I stopped blogging. Not that blogging is a reliable measure of a person's worth, but it was something I did and then something I stopped doing and there was a reason for it.

So where do I go from here? Why am I even writing this? The answer is simple. I'm writing for me, not for you (sorry). I always did. It's OK, blogging was always my means of taking notes, in a public way. It was a way for me to document for myself what I was working on, what interested me. Like many bloggers in the early days I posted my musings because maybe someone would comment on it. Maybe someone would find my tip on managing a photo library as useful and they would thank me in a comment and then I'd be floating on a cloud all day because I actually reached someone.

You see, I wrote this book (a novel) and it means a lot to me. It means a lot to me for you to read it. For probably two years I've struggled on the editing process but now I realize what I've struggled with. I've struggled with me.

So how do you beat yourself anyway? How do you get yourself under control? I don't know, exactly. But what I do know is that I have a growing anxiety. I have a growing discomfort. I have a growing anger and utter dissatisfaction about what I've done about the gap between what I'm doing and what I want to do.

And still, There is a gap in who I used to be and who I am now. Yet this is a different kind of gap. I used to be naive, hopeful, stupid. I've closed up, dried out, and shriveled into cynicism and self-doubt. But something has been setting me free and in this freedom I'm shedding all of my baggage. I am cleaning house. I'm feeling hopeful again.

My mother said something amazing to me yesterday. She told me she had a new idea that inspired her. She said if you believe you're never too old, that it is never too late to begin again, then you are free.