Welcome. For the last four years or so, this blog has served as a place to share more personal portraits of friends, coworkers, acquaintances, and strangers taken on the days off from my day job (hence the former title, Days Off - A Blog). However, as we are fresh into the year 2021, and looking back at some of the true horrors the world had to offer in the sure-to-be-infamous 2020, I am repurposing this space for something that will not only let you peer deeper into my creative mind, but help me explore it along with you.
Writing is something I’ve always enjoyed. My early twenties were filled with reports, essays, stories, and articles with the broad range and sleepless nights only the pursuit of a liberal arts degree can give you. I would inevitably procrastinate and could be found kicking myself in my apartment at 2am, simultaneously typing and tearing at my hair in between smoke breaks in the freezing West Michigan winters. As many professional procrastinators do, I would tell myself to not fall into that hole again, to begin my next article or assignment as soon as possible, spread it out over the week or two before the due date, and be peachy keen. Of course, as we procrastinators know, it would happen with every writing project to follow. In the end, I told others that it’s how I write best: under pressure, with no options left other than write or fail. I believed it back then too.
As I near 30, there are no deadlines nor restrictions to what I care to write; for a while, I didn’t write anything at all, save for the rare Days Off post of a paragraph or two. Now, however, something is different. Now, I don’t need the flame of a failing grade and money lost under my ass to get me typing. Now, it is the words themselves who demand I put them on paper or screen. The thoughts and analyses I once had to conceive and flush out by way of coffee and nicotine now form themselves, multiplying and evolving like a horde of insects I didn’t know was there until their buzzing and breeding is deafening. Truly deafening. I find myself unable to escape the drone of fantasies and nightmares as I perform my laborious tasks of a sterilization specialist during the day. They take over my mind, my vision, forcing me into their world as I waltz through the laboratories of my day job, drifting in and out of reality like a trucker falling asleep at the wheel. As sinister as that may sound, it’s not like I am completely powerless against the flies. I just like the feeling of them carrying me away as I let the truck careen into oblivion.
Thus, we have redesigned this blog to satisfy our desires, the horde and I. The Blog of Darkness will serve as a space to realize and immortalize all the fascinating things that birth themselves in my head before they either starve and wither away or grow unsustainably as they feast on my thoughts. The writing here will include short stories, dreams and nightmares recounted, and hopefully excerpts from more longform writing projects. We plan on injecting photos and images that find themselves outside any particular body of work as well.
As I close my eyes and let my hands fall from the wheel, the horde thanks you for coming along for the ride. We’ll see where this road takes us.