Blogiversary #1

Well, it has officially been a year since I started Terra Home.

For a while, I wasn’t planning to write anything about this anniversary. Then, when I was drifting off to sleep a couple of weeks ago, I realized the date was right around the corner and became motivated to create some kind of reflection post. Oftentimes, new ideas come to me that way—thoughts that seemingly drift in from the ether of my subconscious when I’m trying to fall asleep. It’s a bit exhausting, but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t also somewhat exhilarating to scramble for my phone in the dark to type out my thoughts.

I don’t remember if I had a similar experience with my decision to start this blog. I think in some ways that initial choice was a tad impulsive and driven by boredom. I had quit my job two months before and was spending the summer trying to reset in preparation for grad school in the fall. By August though, I was getting antsy and feeling refreshed enough that the idea of a new writing project was enticing.

However, while that initial choice may have been sudden, it wasn’t like I put no thought into the new endeavor. Reading over my original Statement of Purpose, I’m struck by much consideration and care I put into what I wanted this blog to be. Looking over the work that followed that initial statement, I have a more mixed reaction, but I can’t say I deviated too much from the core tenets I set out for myself. I wanted to write what I wanted to write, not hold myself to strict deadlines or review-like structures, and have fun. I’d say I accomplished all of those points to varying degrees of success.

I never forced myself to work on these pieces for too long or write something because I had made a vague promise that I would in a previous post. I think that’s evidenced by the small number of posts I published. While I would love to have written more over the past year for Terra Home, I’ll admit that being in grad school full time is not conducive to a high output of material. On that front alone, I’m glad I never put myself under pressure to produce more—we’re making progress on that internal war at least.

In terms of the posts I'm the proudest of, I've become quite fond of my piece about Whisper of the Heart. When I initially published it, I wasn't fully satisfied with my work, but since then I've come to appreciate how succinct it is. It certainly has one of my stronger theses of the writing I published online this year.

In retrospect, if I were to add anything to my initial Statement of Purpose after the past year of blogging, I would say that a key part of Terra Home as a project now is that I only want to write a post if I can accomplish all the things necessary to make it what I want it to be. As I stated earlier, I did write what I wanted to write this past year, but I’d say there were some posts that ended up going beyond the scope of what’s possible for me as a single person who writes, edits, and publishes their own work online. This isn’t to say I want to lower the quality of my writing. Rather, I'm aiming to be more conscious of when the ambitions of a concept are too much in conjunction with the requirements of my personal life. Moving into my next year at grad school, I’ll be taking classes full time and also working as a part-time On-Call Librarian. Maybe trying to write comprehensively about Final Fantasy XIII and ending up with 15k words to revise is a bit much for one guy to handle in such cases.

Anyways, I’m not going to make any major promises about new posts or what ideas I’m cooking up at the moment (though I do have some, let me assure you). Instead, I’m going to thank you for sticking around and reading my rambling thoughts. It’s a small readership here at Terra Home and I’m glad that they take the time to engage with my work in our dystopian age.

As always, thanks for reading.