Hi folks,
This is my 501st entry on The Modern Romantic, and it will be my last.
I began The Modern Romantic when I moved to Los Angeles, four years ago, with big plans to make it a blog about screenwriting, which is what I moved out here to do. Much like my path over the last four years, this blog has been about everything but screenwriting. Instead, I allowed it to follow my own interests, everything from politics to gay stuff to design to well, mostly myself. Some of you really liked this, some of you didn't, but on the whole, I consider it a success. I'm a sharper writer because of the site and the feedback I've received and a scattershot approach that ultimately helped me focus my interests.
In fact, it's been so successful that I've taken the best parts of it and parlayed them into more focused projects. My love of politics is now directed towards
Flaming Politics, the site I run with a diverse panel of gay political junkies. The gay stuff now mostly shows up at
Popnography, but also at The
Advocate and
Out. The personal stuff now resides on
Twitter or my Facebook page, which is shamelessly easy to add, though I still ignore all vampire bites.
And if I have to explain the meaning of the name "modern romantic" one more time...
The main reason I'm ending this blog is that, rather than helping me pursue the larger projects I want to do, keeping it updated and fresh is too easy and too tempting a way to procastinate. And in fact, I was in the process of building a new blog, focused on new media, storytelling, film and journalism to replace this one, but in the course of writing this post have realized that doing so right now would be giving myself a diversion from the work I need to be working on.
Throughout my writing career, blogging has helped me immensely and I'm an ardent supporter of the medium, but with my fingers in writing scripts, editing films, directing and pushing my magazine and journalism writing to the next level, blogging right now is a distraction. I love the gratification of being able to write something and have the world see it, but, to quote a Nina Simone recording I've been listening to recently, "You'll use up everything you've got trying to give everybody what they want." I'm so excited to be working on the scripts and stories I'm doing now-- and I think you move people more through stories than through argument, critique or commentary. Also, it's the fun I want to have now.
I'll still be around, of course-- and I'll have a website where you can catch up on what I'm up to, as well as an archive of all my writing (this has been a longtime project of mine) and projects. It'll be at www.japhygrant.com, but I'll link the modernromantic.com domain there automatically when it goes live.
Most of all, I want to thank you readers. There aren't a ton of you, but I know some have been loyal followers and I hope it's been as fun following the development of this blog as it is has been putting it together. For those of you who feel cheated out on a more satisfying ending, well that's life now, isn't it?
See ya later,
-Japhy
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