As I’m sure a regular reader will be able to tell, the past year has been quite an interesting one for Xadara. Not only did it mark the first full year of nearly daily writing, which I’m almost certain resulted in nearly 400 articles (in and of itself quite the achievement, I think) but it also marked the start of quite a few side projects, some of which still haven’t been publicly launched, but will be very, very soon.
It also, however, marked me going into a darker place, so to speak. I don’t deny or try to hide that in many cases this past year I’ve been just downright angry about a great many things.
The site wasn’t supposed to be like this – it just kind of happened. As you go back, you will find the site was more and more carefree, with a few more serious articles here and there, and certainly plenty of critical content, but never anything as razor focused as what I’ve written recently.
I can’t change that I’m an incredibly opinionated person, and that’s a key part of why this site is what it is now – a place for me to share my opinions. However, over the past year… really year and a half but very heavily this past year, one of my most beloved of interests, space, has been infected, shall we say, with an aura of elitism, nationalism, and general bias that I just can’t stand.
I’ve made my opinions on this very well known, and as time has gone on, I’ve felt there is more that needs to be said. As I write more, I discover more, in an almost never ending cycle, to where by the end of 2017 it had almost taken over the site.
It’s time for that to stop. That simple. I can’t do this anymore. Not that I can’t share what I think, but I can’t let it pollute the website, my brand, like it has. I do not regret my decision to share what I think or cover the content I did when I did. However, I don’t think it’s safe to discuss this aspect of space on the site directly anymore, lest it continue to take over and dominate something else that I love.
I’ve become consumed with the idea of fighting this battle against an attitude that I already know won’t change. It’s pointless to clog up my site with article after article on this when I could be writing about what I truly love, not trying to tear apart what I hate. I’ve indeed become consumed with that battle, and it certainly hasn’t helped me. 2017 was already a hard enough year for the world – I was just making it harder on myself, even if the art of crafting my feelings into stabbing words, shredding what I feel are truly poor ideas, was a wonderful stress relief for that moment (and a great source of ad revenue.) In the long term, I feel it has hurt what Xadara actually is supposed to be, and caused me more stress than it’s worth.
That ends today.
Xadara was always supposed to be a positive place, where I could discuss what I liked on my own terms, share things, and have fun, and whomever found the information interesting could take advantage of it. It still is that, certainly, but too much energy has been taken up in content that is just negative. I could have spent that time and energy working on more, and having more fun.
So, over the next few weeks, I will be removing all SpaceX related content from Xadara, and migrating it to a new location on the server, on a separate blog dedicated to such. It will function as an archive of older posts, and also be a place for new thoughts on the subject to be presented when I feel the urge. Some articles might disappear for good, but these are few and far between. I want to archive my content, though, in some form
I do not know yet if these entries will be shared into my triberr feed – right now, I’m thinking not. As it stands, though, I want to free myself from this curse. I love space and rocketry, but as it stands now, covering it beyond only those rockets and launch providers I like, and in historic sense, is just too negative.
I want to focus on the things I like, all the random tech I used to blog about, all the new things I have yet to talk about, all the random videos to share, and ones to create. I’ve mentioned before the backlog that’s just massive. I want to get that knocked out, and I want to push out so much more content. Some of it may still be critical, sure, but it’s not going to be the same way it was.
I’m not going to let something I hate dominate my site anymore.
Thank you for reading. I’ll share the other blog, sometime, maybe.
~Chris