The modern diary or journal of many is to be found in their blogs. I’ve been a blogger for seven years to my Midnight Oil Studios site. In this time, I’ve posted over 450 blogs. Photos, music, films, writing. All contained on the Midnight Oil Studios blog. In the end, this is much the better way to track the autobiography of the modern writer. If in fact the best of them are bloggers to their sites.
For instance, it isn’t complicated in relating the daily life of a writer/blogger about things that interest him/her to their blogs if they write a lot of them. A particular blog that expresses what is in the author’s (artist’s) mind at the time is a valuable insight into the inner workings of the modern blogger at a point in time. The modern blogger that comments on the author’s world much like Midnight Oil Studios commented on my world at the time the blogs were written. All of them are there to see right now and this seems so amazing to me. In effect, we are allowed to enter other’s minds. In the case of Midnight Oil, the blogs provide a fascinating documentation of my growth as a person and artist over this period of time. I posted so much not because I ever felt it necessary. It has always been a pure pleasure to create.
I’m proud of the site in that it contains most of my creative output over seven years. We have made no effort to promote the site during this time. Nothing involved with consultants of things like SEO or social media marketing. I’ve been a marketer and advertising person most of my career but I’ve never attempted to advertise this site.
January was an especially powerful month. For the artist in me. For reasons (I won’t go into here) most of the anxiety that enslaved me through the fall was now gone. The world seemed new again, as only those who have dealt with anxiety understand.
It was not an especially good month according to world news. The pandemic continued to divide and distract the nation. The administration’s numbers continued to tank. There was little good news to be found in the outside world. But it didn’t matter to me because there was such good “inside” news for me. The witch of anxiety had been defeated (for the moment). Calmness and reflection again fell over my life in the month of January 2022. In spite of all of the outside news. The vampire of anxiety that sucked all of your attention to it all day and all night. She was such a ruthless bitch to report to. Over the years, she had come and gone from my life a number of times. I had come to know her coming. And, to know her passing.
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Like January 2022.
This calmness and quietness to my mind after all the months of unrelenting turmoil and fear of the future. It was something I didn’t consciously call into being. Rather, it seemed something like an atmosphere of environment I found myself in. January of 2022.
It seemed similar to the years I lived in San Francisco when thick fog would suddenly appear and disappear over the city. So suddenly (and completely) that a blue sky could be filtered out by a sudden fog rolling in from the Pacific.
It was the type of atmosphere that came over San Francisco at certain times of the year.
This new attitude towards life (after being released from the grip of anxiety) was a context behind life at this time for me.
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This new freedom from the embrace of anxiety is the attitude (context, medium) behind the actual words, music and images in the blogs posted in January 2022.
The month is started out by the sudden passing of a best friend from my early years in LA and my junior year at UCLA. One of the first blogs in January by for this friend. I got back into the music of The Doors and particularly their early music. I watched once of the most incredible series on Netflix I ever watched in Archive 81. We blog about this in Found Footage. A tribute to the passing of the rock icon Meatloaf who I didn’t know anything about until I did research on him after his passing. And a return to an article I wrote over 20 years ago that is getting attention in the ranks of Media Ecology.
The seven blogs I blogged to my Midnight Oil site n January of 2022.
The earliest post is at the bottom of sites on the below link. Read from the bottom up for chronology of blogs.
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As I said at the beginning of this, the modern diary or journal of many is to be found within one’s blogs as much as anything else. They are attempts at communication to the outside world perhaps more than anything else. If they are recorded up to the Internet on a somewhat regularly basis. If they are created with passion and desire to radiate and communicate something from within rather than reflect the light from another source. One either radiates or reflects light. Either one creates light from within. Or, they need light from without. There is a type of balance between these extremes. Some of it mgith be seen in the progression of the seven blogs to Midnight Oil in January of 2022. The end of the third year of the pandemic and the first year of Biden. What could be a worse combination.
But there was the ease up on me by the anxiety witch. And this meant more to my life than the pandemic or the Biden administration.
By this time in my life, I know that she simply comes and goes in and out of my life. There is not really a lot that it seems I can do to stop the witch’s entry of anxiety into my life.
Seven posts below. The posts for January 2022 to Midnight Oil.