Somewhere out there my old blog still exists. I know where it is, I just can’t get in anymore. I lost the password years ago, so now it sits there as dead text on the worldwide web, a leftover from the time when everybody had a blog and posted everything from recipes to brain fog.
I had a YouTube channel back then too, long before Neon Reactions. It was about bushcraft, me in the woods building shelters and making fire. That one I closed down myself. The blog I just lost track of.
And all these years I wanted one again. Some things can’t be said into a camera. When I record, I have to look into the lens and make sure every sentence comes out right for you. That works for an episode. Thoughts don’t work that way though. They ramble, and the written word lets them. I guess that’s where my love for reading comes from too.
Then Beyond the Song happened. Every episode is a lot of writing and a lot of research, and every time I sit down in front of my bookshelf to record, I’m holding a script that had to lose a good part of itself. Some parts sound stupid when you say them out loud. Others would make the video too long. I never deleted any of it. I kept the scripts and I kept the cut pieces, and now they have a home here, in the Xtra section, one entry for every episode.
There’s also a tab up top that is still empty. It’s called On Writing, and maybe my books will go there one day, or a poem now and then. I’m not sure yet. I opened it anyway, because if I don’t open it, I don’t start it. Now it’s there and it wants to be filled, and that sits in the back of my head.
What I want most from this place is what made the old blogs worth it. People wrote back. Writing under a post is something else than writing in a YouTube comment section, and maybe it can be a bit more personal. Let’s just try it.
So if you’re reading this, say hi down there. I made a video about all of this too, but this is the written version, and you know which one I like better.
Leave a Reply