I wouldn’t normally ask, but I’d really hope everyone hitting this page does take some time to read this, to see what being a blogger can be like when things go bad.
October has been an incredible month here on Xadara. I’ve cranked out more articles than nearly any other month ever, and have had a pretty fun time with it all. For the most part, anyway.
There’s one major issue that you might notice – most every other article has been space related.
Let’s be clear – I absolutely love space and rocketry. I always have. No joke, since as early as I can remember I’ve been practically obsessed. The track record of articles on this site related to Space should be a dead giveaway to how much I love the subject – right now, not counting articles which were removed for one particular reason I’m up to 260 entries in the category, and generally speaking I absolutely love writing about it.
The problem is, October has been an absolutely insane month for subjects to cover. Multiple amazing missions starting, missions in progress making new achievements, anniversaries of incredibly historic flights, and even just today the end of a 9-year planet-hunting mission – there’s just an incredible amount of events happening all at once – overwhelmingly too many, really.
Today alone, to give you perspective, I’m feeling the urge to cover 3 current subjects – The Parker Solar Probe breaking new records in closeness to the Sun AND top speed for any manmade craft, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft making a successful first sampling of the asteroid Ryugu, and the Kepler Space Telescope being decommissioned. All of this is just stuff I feel the need to write about that has happened in the past 24 hours!
I can’t keep up with all of this. Really, I can’t. There’s just too much, and it’s created multiple problems for me.
First there’s of course the stress of just keeping up with it all – getting articles out as events happen. That alone wouldn’t be so bad, but with the way, I like to write I’m forced to go into a certain level of detail so as to not feel like I’m wasting an article. Not like they are limited, but I like to give the reader something with depth, so I have to devote time to the entries – some articles have had an hour of work or more put into them!
This is all time I could be working on other things. Granted, the entries in question are great – as I said, I love writing about these subjects and don’t regret following them, as this is a website devoted to what I think about what I like, the fact remains this is all energy that’s taken away from other subjects I equally want to talk about.
That’s a serious problem, and all the energy I’ve had the past month in writing could have been put into other topics. Instead, this has basically become Chris’s space blog, which wouldn’t be so bad were I not a person with a normal life – a work schedule, other interests, hobbies, etc – I don’t just sit here and write all day, every day. At least, I shouldn’t, but the past few weeks have included moments like this where I spend a whole off day here, planning things. Well, a chunk of a day, I mean.
The point is, I can’t keep doing this to myself, to my website. I love space, but that’s not what this site is about. Xadara is a site about what I think about what I like, all subjects. Just as I don’t write about every single new game being released, or every game anniversary, I can’t do the same with space, as much as I want to. For the past year, I’ve tried to get over the fact that the fan community surrounds space and rocketry is incredibly toxic, and now I’ve written myself into this rather harsh corner – cover every space topic in real time or feel like you’re letting readers down.
How many people even read my space articles anyway? Honestly? They trend well, but not as well as many other articles in unrelated subjects have. This goes back to my previous article about if one should cover current topics or not, and the conflicting data regarding such from my own personal experience – my best short-term views were an article regarding a local event, but my best long-term trending article is one about some online game I played back in high school! Mixed messages, to say the least.
I’ve got to cut back on things. I think during lighter periods for other subjects I began to pile up on space content, and over time never cut back as I should have. As I said, I’ve accomplished absolutely nothing I intended to this October – not even anything spooky for Halloween’s sake. What kind of blasphemy is that around here, anyway; to not embrace October? Granted, I went on a trip to the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, so I somewhat devoted October to Space in that regard, but I wanted to get so much more done here in between events, and it just didn’t happen.
I’ve mentioned before this happened last year – October 2017 was also space heavy month, and I seem to have gotten through that, but not before the December 2017 breakdown that spawned nearly 9 months of me just not even trying here.
It sucked. Majorly. The past year, honestly, I’ve not had as much fun as I should have with this site, and I feel so behind on things I want to do that I’ll never catch up. It’s a damn shame, but maybe it’s for the better that, beyond some special launches and anniversaries, I cut back heavily on space topics, just following them for my own sake as a fan of humanities greatest achievements, and devote this space to more modest endeavors – old computers, gaming, tech, and so forth.
I’m normally not one to ask for comments but let me know what you think down below.