Pruning

I spent about four hours over the weekend going through nearly 14 years of blog posts and cutting away at those old thoughts and ramblings. Well, to be honest my ramblings are what I kept on these pages. There were all kinds of filler, band interviews, song premieres, one-offs for random artists reaching out going back to 2013, that as someone who feels they’ve grown as a writer didn’t think they represented who I am as a writer now.

So I got out the garden shears and did some pruning.

So what brought this on, you say? Pretty simple really, I’m a tight wad and I didn’t want to shell out an extra $200 clams a year to bump up space on here. I’d been hovering around 1.5 gig left on the old WordPress servers for a few months now. I went through the first couple of years maybe 6 months ago and shaved a little off the top, but I was back up to 11.5 gig used out of a total of 13 gig. And of course you can’t increase it incrementally. Nope, it goes from 13 gig to a whopping 50 gig. It took me 14 years to get to 11. I’ll be retired before I get close to 50 gig.

I figured I’d take some time this weekend and do a little renovating over here and drop some dead weight. I’ll be honest, it’s been a rather therapeutic experience.

First of all, those first 3 or 4 years I was dying to drop content. Reviews for whatever came my way. Sure, a lot of it was stuff I dug. But there was a lot of local(to me) bands I’d cover here. I’d do interviews as well, and do album announcements. Video premieres and all that. I just wanted eyes on these pages. I started doing this for me, but of course I want to connect with people and get folks to be semi-regulars. Checking in daily to see what I was writing about.

Besides that I was writing about my life; talking about music near and dear to my heart, stories about growing up in the Midwest, and writing about my family as an adult and the stuff we were doing with the kids. And talking frankly about things that bothered me. Early on it was seeing our country kind of regressing socially when Obama got into office and then the total transformation to Fascism disguised as patriotism when Trump arrived in 2016. In 2020 I really started talking more about my own mental health; anxiety, panic, fear of there not being a world left for my kids once they hit adulthood. 2020 was a crazy year for all sorts of reasons, but for me this site was a saving grace. I still felt tethered to the world despite it feeling like it was in freefall.

I suppose if this site was strictly talking about music it wouldn’t have been such a struggle to go and cut bits and pieces from years past, but it’s turned into something far more deeper and personal to me. As I was rummaging through the Complex Distractions closets to find things to drop off to Goodwill I started to realize that I actually have a voice. Random evening posts talking about my kids or what album I was spinning. Talking about trips to my grandma’s house on the lake and songs playing on the radio. Or completely made up stories, inspired by the record I was listening to. I even told my wife yesterday that going through some of these things I wrote that I never realized I was that funny, or that good at telling stories. It was kind of an eye opener.

I also realized that there was indeed a hell of a lot of filler that I could chop out of the Complex Distractions history, and that I want to concentrate more on conversations. Conversations between me and the Universe. Universe being you fine folks that are kind enough to stop by and see what I’m up to. There was something so freeing in the early days about opening up the laptop in the evening and just talking about whatever. I want to get back to that. And I want to get back to more mid-year favorite album lists, and highlighting old albums and talking about what they mean to me and how I found my way to them. That’s the kind of stuff that I want to read. Of course I’m always going to be writing reviews of new records, but I want more of me just yapping into the void and hoping a couple voices yap back.

A writer acquaintance of mine has thrown the idea out to me a few times over the last several years about me putting a collection of my writing together and publish it as a memoir or just a collection of random thoughts. Mostly the personal stuff, but maybe even a choice few album reviews for good measure. I think this pruning and unexpected revisit to past writing has put that idea back into the light. It’s no longer stored back into the shadowy recesses of my subconscious. It’s been saved from the darkness and put on the counter where I can see it everyday, taunting me and forcing me to at least think about the possibility. It’s kind of exciting actually.

So hey, if you bookmarked an interview I did with you and it’s getting a 404 Error message, chances are it’s now floating in the digital galactic trash bin in the fourth dimension. But if you love me talking about dreams about dirty toilets, making mix tapes back in the day, or just random thoughts and made up tales based on albums by Jakob Skott or Majeure, you’re in luck. I love that stuff, too. It’ll be here forever.

And hey, once I’ve trimmed this site as thin and svelte as I can get it and I still need more room I’ll probably pony up the dough. This site does mean a whole hell of a lot to me. It’s an extension of my being, honestly. It’s my personality in zeros and ones form. I won’t give that up. There’s too many memories here for me to lose.

But I’ll definitely prune this post if it gives me a couple extra kilobytes. Just letting you know.