When I first started what later became this site it really just started out as a directionless blog. It’s gone through a few domain name changes from thespiderslair to theretrowitch to its current state but the core blog underneath has remained the same ever since I was still in college.
I find myself returning to a desire to just blog about random stuff these days rather than trying to maintain any semblence of a purpose. I rebranded it a few times while trying to focus the types of topics I wrote about, yet each time I always ended up using it as a simple blog. So that is what I am doing today. Partially I am wide ass awake at 2:18 in the morning on what is now a Sunday. I am also partially trying to organize and process my thoughts on a few things that have been on my mind lately. I suppose there is also a part of me that is just bored.
I am not sure exactly what I want to write about. Sometimes I have a skeleton plan before I start typing and other times I just start putting down words and see where it goes. This is one of those times. I don’t really have a plan, I just want to be typing, I guess in a way just for the sake of it.
I have tried to maintain some remnants of my training as a professional journalist over the years. I’ve tried to do some newsy type stuff here on this site while also doing some newscast type stuff on my various Youtube channels. Like many bipolar souls out there. I often find myself victim of the racing thoughs. That is to say dozens of random thoughts popping into my brain all at once. I guess this is just as good a way to get them out of my head as any other method. I could be listening to music but that doesn’t appeal to me right now.
I remember one of my ealiest articles I wrote for an earlier version of this site was a passionate retrospective on Code Red Mountain Dew. I remember it well because the news editor I worked for at the time read it and told me he wished I would be as passionate about writing city hall stories as I was writing about soda pop. I eventually did become more invested in that stuff during my time as a professional journalist but these days I have to say my interest in any sort of politics is not what it used to be.
Even though this site has lasted through several domain name changes and rebrandings, going back over a dacade and a half at this point, it’s far from the first online space I tried to make my home for my random thoughts. Let’s just say I have had dozens of blogs, websites and online profiles over the years where I could put down my thoughts. This one has easily lasted longer than any of those and for that reason I guess it holds a special place in my heart.
I made my very first website all the way back in 1999 when I was 16 years old and still in high school. It was a half assed project I coded by hand entirely in html for a Publications class I was taking at the time. Remember back then computers were still just taking off and the web was still fairly new. This was before the infamous dot-com bubble. My high school was offering a class in basic web design because they claimed it was the key to future employment in the changing world. They weren’t entirely correct about that. Sure in the early days of the world wide web it required some knowledge of HTML and computer savvy but it really didn’t take the tech industry long to realize they be better served developing user friendly do-it-yourself low cost webkits rather than paying web designers higher wages to do it professionally. Once local mom and pop shops learned they could make a decent website themselves using these new low cost tools instead of paying freelance web designers like myself, well that market dried up in a hurry. Sure the larger corporations learned they needed more functionality in their sites than a template could provide, but by and large that lucrative future coding websites I was promised never really materialized. At least not for those who didn’t take the time to learn to code apps instead. Thanks a lot Apple.
Whatever. I never intented to make a career out of making websites. Sure, like countless others my generation who were duped into learning web design I tried to make the next big website. Until the devestating dot-com bubble burst and we all realize that dream was dead on arrival. Oh well, you live and learn as they say. Yet it didn’t take long before I realize I wasn’t making websites in any attempt to turn them into a profitable venture, well except for a couple but those were related to business I was involved offline too. I really always just wanted a place to put down my thoughts while honing my writing skills at the same time. Obviously this served me well as I worked for nearly a decade as a paid writer before leaving the news business behind. One thing it did do was push me to finish writing my first novel until I could get it published. I have since published two more novels so I guess it was a good investment in my time.
I’m not really sure what the purpose of this place is anymore. I have largely turned to vlogging on Youtube as a means of saying the things I want to say these days. Yet as a writer it is hard coded in my DNA to want to put words to paper, even if it is digital paper I suppose. Like this websites own identity changes over the years my own interests change often enough that I don’t really get too invested in any one thing for too long. I guess that is my nature. One of my former editors once said a writers knowledge base runs a mile wide and an inch deep. I think he was right.
Stephanie Bri 