Despite what the click-bait post title may have lead you to believe, I am not writing about Guy, Interlinked shutting down. Instead, I wish to write a bit about my thoughts, intentions, hopes and dreams for the site, and explain to you, devoted reader1, what has been going on while the site has been left to fallow over the last eight weeks.

The Site

I’ve already discussed some of the main reasons for Guy, Interlinked in previous posts, most clearly regarding digression and regression, so I won’t cover that ground again. Ultimately, Guy, Interlinked is a site for a reader of one: me. I want to be true to myself, write in a manner of which I can be proud, and about the topics I find interesting. My hope, of course, is that someone else will find it interesting too, but I’d consider that a bonus. This site is a way to exorcise thoughts from my mind, with the goal of either banishing them forever so they’ll leave me alone, or allow them room to breath and grow into something more concrete.

The Vows

At the risk of pulling back the curtain even further2 on how things work around here, what I have never shared before now is that when I started started Guy, Interlinked at the beginning of 2023, I made to myself the following vows:

  1. I will post to Guy, Interlinked at least once every calendar week for all of 2023.
  2. I will never mention the previous vow in any post, and tell very few people in real life.
  3. I will never explain or talk about post frequency (or lack there-of.)

The purpose of the first vow was to force myself to create. I have dreams of things I’d like to make, but more often than not, my dreams stay dreams. By setting a once weekly publishing schedule, I forced myself to create, rather than simply think about creating. The second vow was because I heard from somewhere3 that when people set goals for themselves and tell other people, internally they feel the same as if they actually achieved the goal. I thought if I made it a rule not to tell anyone, then I’d be sure to achieve my goal!4

The final vow was mostly reactionary to how some content creators disappear disappear without a word, then apologize for not making content. I don’t like how it feels to be on the receiving end of that, so I just figured I wouldn’t put you through that.

Goal Achieved!

From January 2023 to late March 2023 I didn’t miss a week,5 and it was great. I was having fun, I was making things I was proud of, things were almost exactly what I wanted. Almost. In a twist of irony, as writing for Guy, Interlinked was improving my life, the vows were having the opposite effect. It was subtle, but I found that instead of the site being an extension of myself, I felt like I was an extension of the site. As I say, it was subtle, maintaining the site wasn’t burdensome, or overly stressful.6 But making posts at the frequency and level of quality I wanted was taking a lot of time, often six to eight hours a week. That may not sound like a lot, but considering I’m a 9-5 workin’ man with a family, it’s a big deal for a non-paying side gig.

It was working, and could have kept working, but there were other factors. First, there was at least one Saturday where I spent nearly the whole day working on a post. My family was very kind and encouraging, but it didn’t feel right. My priorities felt disordered, not just with family, but my faith as well. The site was taking preeminence over my other obligations. So, after my April 4th post, I intentionally broke the number one rule of the site, and didn’t post for a full calendar week. The week after that, I posted as a way to say (to myself as much as anyone else) that this site was still something worth doing.7

And I haven’t written a post since. Until this one, where I happen to be breaking my second and third vow.

Guy, Interlinked with the Future?

What’s next? Expect more. Expect less. I’m not going to cast a big vision or anything, as I intend to continue in much the same way as I have been. So, more, but less. The biggest hurdle I have to overcome is the amount of time it takes me to write, so I’ve been working on ways to improve my process and become more efficient.

Anyway, thanks for your patience, and catch you next time.

Further Reading

Footnotes

  1. You know who you are. ↩

  2. It’s as if my curtains have curtains. And behind those curtains, more curtains. I’ve done nothing but pull back curtains, and I imagine I will continue pulling them back until we discover why man is capable of evil. ↩

  3. This was based on a study I read where if you shared certain types of goals with strangers, you were less likely to actually meet your goals. It had something to do with the sharing causing the same feeling of rewards as actually accomplishing the goal. I did some research recently to try to find what I was remembering, but as is most often the case with science in news, the truth is often complicated. ↩

  4. Although my logic is flawless, thinking back on it in the context of a blog it makes no sense, because unlike going to the gym, or being nicer to people, it is trivially easy for anyone to check if you are posting on a blog, so there is still that social pressure. Like, if I told my mom I had a blog, she’d totally read it and then the jig would be up. ↩

  5. If you can call an Ant Detective and a post about procrastination “not missing a week.” ↩

  6. Indeed, how stressful could it be at this point, the only obligations I had were to myself. ↩

  7. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing poorly. Often mis-attributed to G.K. Chesterton (as in this article, and also this one) but the truth is more nuanced. ↩