A Retrospective Post

Some of you may recall my former blog, which focused on a wide range of paranormal subjects that was dispensed with both agnosticism and speculative ruminations. The blogs have always been a hobby on a subject I am intimately familiar with, while I claimed no expertise. I wanted to address the many aspects of the subject that no one else cared to look at in terms of writing on these subjects. Perhaps and maybe were words and terms I often used in order to clarify ruminations that led to a theoretical statement.
At that time, I would regularly submit topics to The Anomalist, which would add them to their daily compendium. The aim of this was to promote a dialog or exchange on the subject matter, which failed to jell, while the readership was interested in what I wrote as it remains that about forty to fifty percent spent over an hour reading the material at Intangible Materiality. I stopped looking at the stats due to the fact, they were an abstraction, although when over a half million visitors had been logged as reading what I had wrote, I noticed there was a disconnect between any dialog that resulted and statistics.
 Over time, Nick Redfern linked to some articles and I contributed several articles to New Dawn Magazine as well as taking part in two published books that were anthologies on paranormal subjects.  Only after his death did I know that Mac Tonnies enjoyed the blog, with whom I always felt a certain kinship with. So why did I scuttle the blog? Mac's death and more importantly, what he expressed made me think..not something I can say for the vast majority that has been written will ever be capable of. I thought to myself, so now what?

I was not going to pursue material elsewhere that has been covered to death in mythological terms. It was said that Mac lived in his head and did not take care of his health. I found myself having difficulty walking which seemed a nuisance, and when I visited a physician after being nagged about it, I found I was an inch away from paralysis. Hmmm.

There are several blogs that remain on line that shall remain nameless out of discerning a difference between respecting the authors and respecting the material that have become a self parody, or caricature of probing deeper into what makes an event an event. I did not want to repeat myself while sensing I could make a transition between this being a hobby and being more formal about the whole thing, knowing full well that there is no real living to be made in writing unless I severely compromised my own aims.
I had one individual whom I respect offer to edit Intangible into book form and shortly thereafter I lost interest in that project, that is to say, revisiting my output was not something I relished. In this interim, I posted some off and on internet material a UFO magazine, as a sort of half hearted effort to keep my own flagging interest in the audience for this sort of thing going. I collaborated in another site with Rick Phillips in founding what is called The C Influence but it morphed into something that did not appeal to me further rather than being pushed or pulled, I felt ambivalent about the results.

I began this blog with two goals in mind. One was that I would not submit material to The Anomalist as that proved a sort of silly pursuit in retrospect as my listings were paired with links to articles that I thought were either brain dead, exaggerations, or simply "dumb" I did not seek any stereotypes by association. Then I began Transit of Contingencies and this blog would stand stubbornly on it's own two feet to explore the obscure, the unapproachable, the unspoken issues that included the paranormal and the shift I wanted to emphasize was the enigma of life and consciousness in of  itself and how it intersected with what are considered paranormal contexts.

Readership plummeted, which I had anticipated and rather welcomed as I would not be barraged by comments that either were simply loopy, congratulatory or frightening. Some readers would skim the material I wrote and completely misinterpreted what I wrote for which I blamed myself, which was partly true as at that time I preferred a denser writing style.
Looking back today in thinking about where this led me, as Gurdjieff would say it led me back to myself and what is the great mystery, what a human being is, and more importantly what the human being is not. Myself in particular. The necessity of a healthy ego that prompts one to create in public can be a prelude to a downfall. Having a siege of cancer further diluted my focus from this hobby, which is fortunate in that to date, it has not popped back into the picture.
I suppose on thing that I did accomplish was to avoid what I thought were compromises to the material which is more important than abstract stats, seeking recognition or being influential..all these now seem naively childish.
Where to go from here? Further...the "high lonesome sound of gene Clark's "Silver Raven" courses in my blood but my blood has been thinned to prevent another heart attack, and yet somehow writing has been a means to challenge myself and I do not see that saga ending until I expire into being a a bag of meat.