The Meaning of All This
The thirteenth lap around the sun is almost complete for Dead End Follies.
Another year of moderate success. Another year of quantifiable, but unqualified growth. For a second straight year, the site showed a robust increase in numbers and yet an almost flat line on social media performance. This is what happens when you're running a site where you're mostly talking to yourself. The newsletter gives me an idea of how many hardcores come in day after day for new content (around eighty die-hards), but the rest of you are swooped in by the mysterious ways of the internet.
This is cool. This is what I've been working towards. But the inner conflict between my desire to journal my cultural explorations and my desire to grow an audience to discuss these explorations with is very real. This translate into a conflict between organically chronicling everything I read, see and listen to and trying to tailor my content to whatever you seem to better respond to and this has been clear in 2022: music reviews and conversations with fringe, but interesting cultural characters.
I don't feel an overwhelming need to change the site since it's been taking what I deem a reasonable chunk of my life over the last two years, but I do want to explore new ways of connecting and providing value for those who deem the site worthy of their time and attention. After all, this is what Dead End Follies is supposed to be: a pit stop from the ever intensifying media game: bland opinions, surface level reads and obviousness in every form. Also, a place where you can find things no one else talks about.
So, how will the site change in 2023. In three ways: a) there will be more music talk. This is what seems to resonate better with all of you and my therapist said it was the most important part of my life I didn't talk about nearly enough, so there you have it. b) I will try my best to bring back conversations. Hopefully with new and interesting people (I have a problem with bringing back old friends all the time. c) Two-way social media posts where I ask you for what YOU want. I want to give you some control in 2023.
Everything else will remain the same because it is both appreciated and fulfilling for me to do.
It was Mark Manson who said out of the blue on his social media : growth requires loss. In order to become the version of yourself you envision, you need to let go of who you were and how you once understood the world. So, I might cull a little here and there over 2023 and quietly let go of pieces that require more time and effort than they give gratification. Because I got all that grizzled old man energy now. No time to lose. No words to waste anymore. 2023 will be same, but different. Same, but better.
