Five Years Later, What Am I Even Doing Anymore? Well, Besides Cookies

Yes, contrary to what you’re probably thinking, I am aware of the elephant in the room. In fact, I’d say this tweet of mine from yesterday fairly well points out that elephant, paints it pink, calls it smelly, and nicknames it “Priscilla”:

Someone should put a stop to the tumbleweeds rolling across my blog. Anyone? No? Maybe I should give in & rename it Jason’s Cookie Thoughts.

— Jason A. Rust (@jasonarust) January 29, 2015

Of course, complaining about it doesn’t change a damn thing. Case in point, later that same day, I was busy posting to Instagram about getting’ mah double chocolate on. But nary a blog post in sight. An Instagram, sure, but certainly not a blog post.

The point is, let’s be honest, I have posted more about baked goods in the past month probably than ever before in the history of the interwebs. Like, going all the way back to the dark times of 1993 when you had to be a pocket-protector-sporting Nerd-with-a-much-deserved-capital-N to have access to websites. And most of the websites were either glittery text or pictures of naked people from the Netherlands.

I mean, the website of naked people were from the Netherlands. I was never sure of the country of origin of the naked people themselves. It wasn’t, um, apparent.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t all naked people on Dutch websites and maybe I’m not posting baking posts quite that much, but it’s definitely been Bake-r-rama around here since November.  And considering that my PPW (Posts Per Week) stat is down to some miniscule value that I’d need a supercomputer, a team of mathematicians, and some irrational numbers with funky symbols to accurately define, I’m pretty sure that means my Cookies Per Post stat is through the roof.

I mean, really’? Cookies? Baked goods? Is that all I’ve got?

Admittedly, there’s surely nothing wrong with baked goods, per se. Hell, everybody who’s not a worshipper of the Fell Demonic Goat People enjoys a tasty baked thing from time to time. But I started this blog with the intent of writing about stuff that was on my mind, to practice for writing books that might someday end up on a shelf. Whatever happened to be on my mind at that moment of writing ended up in the posts, then, regardless of whether it was a genuinely thought about being a parent, or 473 rambling words about why Q-Tips are better than the store brands of…well, whatever you call Q-Tips and aren’t Q-Tips.

Wait, are they swabs, maybe? I dunno. If you ask me, “swabs” is a hundred times worse than moist. It’s way up there with “boner” in the pantheon of awful words. Which is why, no matter what brand goes in my ear, it’s a “Q-Tip” and not a swab.

Ahem. Anyway, what I’m trying to get at is that I haven’t been posting posts in my post-posting space lately because of a weird subject/entertainment paralysis. See, I’ve attracted a few followers over the last five years, and there are enough people subscribed to Puddintopia on this day in 2015 that I honestly find myself fretting that I should try and write something worthy of your attention. And because I’m never sure what topic I think might be enertaining, I end up not writing anything at all.  Instead, I just stick to editing Project Hermey, or whatever book I’m working on instead.

But that’s as back-assward, if you’ll pardon the expression, as having a one-eyed parrot wearing a pirate.

So we’re getting back to basics around here. No more “topics” unless something happens naturally. Posts for the rest of 2015 are going to be streams of consciousness, pulling in whatever flotsam happened to be bouncing around in my noggin at that moment, no matter how ridiculous, poorly informed,  or random.  If I end up ranting about revising a book for 2 consecutive weeks because that’s all I’ve got on my mind, well, then, that’s what I’m going do.

My hope is that you’ll hop aboard a kayak with me, ready to brave the rapids of my daily thoughts.  If you choose not to, I’ll understand completely. Some people really prefer blogs that actually have a point, and the last thing I want to do is suggest I’ll always have one.  Likewise, I can’t promise whatever’s on my mind will be immediately illuminating.

But I do hope it mostly be entertaining.

Grab your Q-Tips, then, boys and girls, because I’m getting the band back together. It’s time to revisit the old playground and see what pops up along another 120,000 word-long adventure to nowhere.

What got me thinking about all this—besides being sick of looking at the same picture of the cookies from my most recent post, two embarrassing weeks ago—is that on this day, five years in the past, way back in 2010, I decided to take the first step of an adventure. It was the start of my long delayed life’s journey to find out if I could be a real writer or not.

Since then, I’ve written a ridiculous volume of words (well over a million), including not quite a thousand blogs posts (this one makes 998, to be precise) and six (!) novels. I’ve survived the query trenches and signed with a real, honest-to-the-ancients literary agent who believes in my voice and work and fights every day to get my words bound, printed, and put on shelves.  I’ve connected with more great writers than I’d have ever thought possible, a tribe with whom I feel a belonging I’ve seldom felt before.

And above and beyond all of that, I’ve worked day after day after day at the craft of making words, so that I’m confident enough to say that today, this day, I can make the best words I’ve ever made in my life.

But that’s not enough, just know that. I will keep working, too, because tomorrow’s words can always be an improvement upon today’s, and I will—not, I must—strive to make sure that they are.

After five pretty awesome years, I see that the post about the cookies put me at  crossroads I didn’t, until just this moment, understand I had reached. But now, seeing it, I see to only way across is to keep moving forward. No turning. No change of course. No veering to see if that turn might be the wrong left to make at Albuquerque. I want five more years and thousands of more readers.

From now on, then, while I might still make plenty of cookies—and I’ll certainly Instagram every last one that comes out of my oven—the only thing piping hot and aromatic around here will be blogs posts, not baked goods.

And you can take from that whatever understand you’d like.

Thank you for five years of rambling and nonsense, puddintopians.  I hope I’ve managed to give you a chuckle from time to time, and I hope even more that you’re looking forward, like me, to five more years of wondering what’s going to come out of my head.

Now get out there and have a great weekend…and try not to set the place on fire.

Pud’n