Milemarker Quandary

Conall McCabe, Second Quandary

This blog's three-year anniversary is coming up. Cool. That's a fine time to admit to a crisis of purpose.

I originally started Beyond Easy because I'd been writing about virtually nothing about video games for however many years and I wanted to write about something -- ANYTHING -- else. (This change of attitude was most likely spurred by the accumulated fallout of the Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIII experiences.) At the time, writing miniature essays about whatever I happened to be interested in during a given week was positively liberating. But the price of freedom is the danger of aimlessness, and I fear this blog is becoming less interesting because of its lack of focus. I'll admit that it often feels like an obligation -- a prompt like WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING, ANYTHING doesn't exactly put the lead in my pencil.

So where can I go from here?

Specialization? Question: on what subjects can I claim myself an authority, or claim to offer a unique and relevant perspective?

Oh, god. That's a line of self-examination that will lead me to the fabled quarter-life crisis. I'm not sure "blogger as columnist" is an act I can pull off.

Current events? I am increasingly fatigued by the Twitter/Tumblr engine of outraged punditry. Besides: other people already have it covered, and they do it better and enjoy it more than me.

Vanity pieces? In other words, move toward treating Beyond Easy more like a journal (of the "Live" variety) than a topical blog. Sadly, this is what I think I've been closest to lately. I'm still not at the point where I'm posting elaborated Facebook updates about what I did over the weekend and what products I'm consuming, but I fear we're still on the arbitrary chatter side of "freeform." This probably isn't a direction to go any further in.

Mothballs? All things being equal, the kind of writing I enjoy most lately is fiction. Lately I'm wondering if it mightn't make me happier to focus exclusively on that, regardless of where it appears or who might end up reading it. I'd certainly perform more efficiently on this front if I didn't have to pull myself away once a week or so to jury rig a blog post. Putting Beyond Easy on hiatus is always an option.

But I'd also prefer not to work in a complete vacuum (which is more or less the experience of writing fiction unless you're dealt an excellent hand) if it can be avoided. At the very least, maintaining a blog keeps a communication channel open. 

Comics? There's a thought. Stick to writing fiction. Instead of blogging, take breaks from prose by drawing comic strips. There's more Sisyphus strips I'd like to do. I have ideas for another 8EB mini-arc, and cubeblockhead comics are always fun to draw. Unlike blogging, drawing comics tends not to tap into the same well as writing fiction, and it would give me something I can easily share with friends and my adoring public. (Pause for prolonged drag on cigarette followed by barely audible sigh.)

So I'm open to suggestion. And I hope you'll help me out.

If you're reading this, I'm curious to know: what am I doing (or what have I done in the past) that works? If you read this thing from time to time, what kinds of posts do you enjoy reading? Which ones do you skim and skip over? Would it be better if I updated more often with shorter pieces, or irregularly posted longer pieces? Should I just chuck it all and do more comics? Should I just say nuts to all this and go off-radar altogether for a while?