Purpose

This blog is an utter failure.

Seems kind of harsh to say about my own project, but it’s true. I have failed epically at what I had hoped to do here. The very fact that I’m writing this kind of post is only proof of my failure. And I’m not talking about my lack of new content in recent months – many writers go through dry spells, especially when real life intrudes so rudely on their pontificating.

I’m talking about purpose. Purpose and follow-through.

Blacklight Metaphysics started as a regular website. I hosted it on Freewebs (now Webs.com) as a place to publish the essays that I was writing for the Witches’ Voice and other such websites. I wanted a place where I could keep my own writing, but also invite writing from others. Yup, I had delusions of editorhood. It was my hope that I could get a few other people to contribute some essays of interest along the way. You see, I didn’t want my site to devolve into a self-serving refuse pile of my own thoughts and ramblings – I wanted it to be a place where occultists could read and write serious essays on magical experiences and techniques that focused on those experiences, and not on my musings of them. I wanted differing opinions, and different techniques than I was versed in.

Well, it didn’t happen.

I did develop a nice little place to house my own essays, but I never got any submissions, and I never established a swanky nightclub of occult thought. See, most occultists already have their own blogs, so they don’t generally write a lot for others (unless those others are one of the Really Big Ones). A lot of occultists also have access to the same websites I was using to publish my own work. So why would they need to publish on mine?

And switching my site to a blog format was really the death blow. Now I’m free to ramble incessantly about Nobody Cares, and I’m so off topic I’m not sure what to do with myself.

And then I had a religious conversion. And that impacts what one writes about a great deal. All of a sudden those subjective, spiritual experiences I was trying not to have muck up my magic had become a central feature of it. Pesky gods, being all meddlesome and all.

So I’m considering a few options.

1) Scrap the whole thing. Turn the Blacklight off, rename my blog, and embrace the ramble.
2) Develop divergent paths. Separate my essays from my blog, and allow each to follow their own direction. Continue to feebly request contributions for my essay site, and then whine about the lack of them on my blog.
3) Refocus my efforts and kill the blog. No more musings. Just the old site, with my essays and hopefully a few others. Pretend I’m a serious writer, crank out a few more essays, and maybe write a book.
4) Keep doing what I’m doing. Have a few essays pop up now and them, and cram random pontifications in the empty space between.

For now I’m going with number 4, because it’s the path of least resistance, and magic works through the path of least resistance. Most times. But I’m open to some other options, and I would love some input from the folks that actually spent their hard-earned time reading my blog. So, thoughts?