New year eh? There’s a lot to think about for this year, and I am excited; but it only feels right to reflect a bit on 2018 before I go touch on 2019. Let’s get this show started!
For me, it feels like the year was mostly about planting and growing new content. Although I dabbled in other blog entry categories in the years before, it felt kind of minimal and still in that early exploratory stage where I wasn’t quite sure where things would go. This time, though, I was playing around more with newer ideas as well as sticking to my roots.
Also, there was this.
Star Wars month! I had a lot of fun writing the Star Wars-centered blog entries throughout the month of May, and will definitely do more of that this year. Wanna know something funny though? The decision to do that was really just a spur of the moment type of thing. I initially figured I’d write one entry on my love for the franchise, but then figured, “Hang on… there’s a lot more I’d love to talk about!” So I decided to write a good handful of blog posts on different subjects, from the films and how I got into them, to my favourite parodies of it. I even added a review of the Han Solo movie for extra fun.
During that, I found that I had loved creating the featured images for the Star Wars posts, so I decided to re-branded some of the existing blog categories and create images for them. I love dabbling in graphic design, so it’ll be fun to watch how I change up the images and watch them evolve this year.
In re-branding the entries, I named the free-form entries From the Casually Randomized Mingled up Musings of SomeMediaGeek (or Mingled-up Musings for short). I always wanted to use a long title like that for something, so I consider that a nice little fulfilled goal of mine.
I also added a new daydream-centered series titled Astonishing Reveries of a Media-filled Mind. This and Mingled-up Musings feel like natural extensions of me since I often like exploring things in the realm of my crazy little brain, so I had fun writing them and will continue doing these entries.
I also re-branded the more focused thought-piece entries into a series called The Current Thought on My Mind. It’s nice to go into different topics, so it felt like a good idea to do this. Some topics might be out of place though since I have a bit of a cerebral comedic theme/vibe, so I’ll take a good look at what I feel works and what might seem out of place. I like writing thought pieces, so it’ll be neat seeing what I explore this year.
After breathing new life into those blog series, the big month came. And by that, I mean October. For anyone new here, Halloween is my favourite time of the year; and I knew I wanted to do a lot more Halloween entries throughout October to celebrate the holiday. Part of this included reviews of horror movies from my childhood, Halloween-themed versions of Mingled-up Musings and other blog series, as well as more miscellaneous things such as tributes, and personal memories of Halloween/horror-related topics.
It was tricky choosing the topics to write about, largely because there was so much to choose from! As you can imagine, there will be more this year. One of my favourite Halloween entries was the Stabby Reverie daydream, in which I wrote out a story based on a slasher movie-inspired daydream. That’s easily the longest entry on the blog, but I loved writing it and adding videos of music from Youtube really helped add to the whole vibe and tone. Creating the featured image was also lots of fun. It’s really tempting to do something like that again this Halloween, but we’ll see what comes about.
After that, I celebrated with the 100th blog post by writing a little reflection. It’s weird to acknowledge that reflection in this reflection of last year, so cue the obligatory reference-ception/Inception joke.
Yep, still an awesome sound.
Anyway, it’s definitely worth mentioning the 100 blog post though since I talked about what I did during a creative rut I was going through a few years ago. I took the time to go into why I not only like writing, but why personal expression through the free-form stream-of-consciousness approach and other creative fields have always been important to me. Blogging about that felt very personal, but it felt good to share it and get a little more personal. Writing consistently is not easy, so looking into the things behind it and why it means a lot to me felt like a big step in my development.
Then came the rest of the November entries, which were a nice return to form. Even though I loved doing the October entries, it felt great doing my thing with Mingled-up Musings since that’s always my favourite thing to write.
After that… there was an attempt at December entries to celebrate Christmas. This didn’t go like I expected, since there are only two movie reviews I wrote. I was planning on doing a few more reviews, but I also felt that it made sense to write entries on childhood memories much like I did with some of the Halloween entries. As I brainstormed things and started to plan and map out the blog posts, I found it to be a little hard trying to fully gather my thoughts. Sure, some of the actual holiday plans outside of the blog were a bit hectic, and planning the entries could’ve gone better, but with how my life and family stuff has been growing and changing over the last few years, I had a hard time liking the holiday season and fully gathering my thoughts on it.
Long story short, it felt a little overwhelming to revisit my memories of the more fun childhood stuff I wanted to write about. There are some things I need to wrestle out of my head in regards to more modern-day holiday stress and craziness, so I figured I’d just do movie reviews throughout December. And even though I liked that idea and had chosen movies to talk about, it felt like I was forcing myself to do something that, in hindsight, I wasn’t all that excited about.
December could’ve gone better in many ways, but it wasn’t all bad as far as Christmas itself goes. Everything in preparing for the holiday season can be stressful and maddening for a lot of people, but then the day comes and it gives everyone a moment to eat some food, catch up and chat, and open presents. I had a pretty good time, considering that I was able to get a Nintendo Switch with gift cards. It had been quite a while since I last got a new video game system (heck, it had been a while since I last played anything at all), so it’s nice to step away from the craziness and give myself a break.
Ah yes, and then there was New Year’s Eve. I didn’t have any plans for it other than to write this blog post. I would’ve liked to have posted this on New Year’s Eve, but it took a while to process everything I wanted to talk about without making this too similar to the 100th blog post and other reflection pieces. I love doing these sorts of entries, so I knew I wanted to be in-depth enough by touching on the main accomplishments of last year.
Overall, I’d say 2018 was a pretty good year. There were some missteps for sure, but for the most part, I had fun and I’m happy with how much I wrote. It’s easily the most active I’ve been in terms of published entries (the analytics tell me that I wrote 46 blog posts throughout the year).
So now, you’re probably wondering what my goals are for this year. Two words… better planning. I definitely want to make planning content a bigger priority. Deciding on blog posts in advance, writing them in advance, and even/especially creating the holiday-themed entries early are things I want to do. I’ve been watching videos on how others create content and schedule it, so I have a lot of ideas on how to do this. That will lead to more behind-the-scenes stuff I want to share, so I’m excited to do that as well.
And as far as new things go, well I won’t go into too much. But let’s just say I want to do more with the Nostalgic Lookback entries and Mingled-up Musings.
I also intend to refine the branding/focus here. Nothing will change too much from that, it’s mostly going to give me a better idea of how to describe the blog, what I do, and what people can expect without feeling overwhelmed by the variety aspect.
In short, 2018 was about planting and growing new content, but 2019 will be about trimming it just a bit, maybe even reshaping things into different forms of content. This year will be about doing what I love, and taking it further. I can’t wait to see where it all goes, and I hope you’ll be along for the ride.
Thank you for reading! Let’s make this year awesome. 🙂
Kasey Lewis - Actor, Writer, Creator 