Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

I’m not happy.

The dearth of posts on this site is not a sign of solidarity with the WGA strike. It’s not a byproduct of extreme preoccupation in other areas. Not that grad school isn’t keeping me busy, I’m not suggesting otherwise, hello, My Adviser, I know you occasionally read this.

I believed, mistakenly, that after a year of daily writing the act had become second nature, that even without the motivators of The Goal and the The Project, my hand would continue to be drawn toward my Wordpress bookmark as if magnetized. Some people do their Christmas shopping on the assumption that if they just walk into the store and do enough browsing, the right gifts will eventually jump out at them, highlighted, Terminator-style, in an outline of tinsel. This method of gift buying hardly ever works. You almost always end up buying a Worst Case Scenario, and I think we can all agree that while such a book is lacking as a gift, the irony of the title in regards to gift-giving is abundant.

Christmas gifts, writing, it’s all the same to me. I always think I can fly by the seat of my pants improvising brilliance as I go, but if grad school has taught me anything so far, it’s that my brain doesn’t actually work like that, contrary to my prior assumptions. (Grad school has also taught me a lot about brains in the general sense. The zombies were right. They are delicious.)

In the nearly two months since calling an official stop to the once-per-day schedule I’ve written ten posts (not including this one), or roughly one quarter the amount that I had been writing as compared to the previous year.  Quality trumps sheer quantity, of course, but more troubling is that the frequency with which I write has steadily dropped off.  There were eight posts in October, but this one will make only the fourth for November.

But why torture myself over it?  Well, the fact is that I like writing.  I like having a place where I can mouth off about whatever strikes my fancy.  A place that I designed myself.  A place that lets me contribute.  If this site disappeared tomorrow, I’d surely build a new one.  I need it to exist, even if I’m the only one who cares about it.  Allowing it to wither would be like allowing a part of myself to wither, and that would be failure.

This is the part where I look you dead in the eye and say, “I don’t do failure.”  The fact of the matter, however, is that I certainly do.  We all do.  Anyone who tells you otherwise is grotesquely overestimating the power he has over the universe.  Still, I can truthfully tell you that I hate failure and will go to great lengths to prevent it.

So I want there to be updates.  For there to be updates, there needs to be a plan.  A commitment.  A schedule.  Whether that schedule ends up being daily again or a more modest Monday-Wednesday-Friday thing remains to be determined.  But there will be a schedule.  There will also be a new site design, one that injects a little color into the place.  I’d like very much to give you my thoughts on House, Heroes, and several other things that do not begin with H.

Now, how embarrassing would it be if I didn’t post again until Thursday?  I know.  It would be so embarrassing.  Let’s hope I don’t make a fool out of myself on this one.