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| Brought garlic, a stake, a silver bullet, a nuclear weapon... |
I’m hereby shutting down Conifers & Citrus. You see, I’ve
got this other, much less-trafficked side project going on, so…
Yes, I kill blogs, literally, like they kill Jason or
bankable stars on soap operas, but, in all honesty, this time feels different.
I haven’t plowed through the all condensed games since well before the Gold Cup;
haven’t listened to even one soccer podcast since, oh, March; and I stop
reading halfway through the one or two articles I start each week. I sometimes
sit through that show with Caleb Carr and Susannah Collins and…I don’t know,
something about that feels sorta fucked up.
Anyway, yeah, broadly I’ve stopped giving a shit.
I’ll still watch some games, but I'll do it on my time and without talking about it - e.g., like a normal person. The desire to pick apart, joke about, or speculate on what I’m
seeing snuck out the back door without so much as a goodbye (silent, deadly,
and lightly tragic). I think I just ran out of new things to say. Just under a
week ago, I was telling this guy that I know as
much as I’ll ever know about soccer, like, right now, and, seeing as I’ve got
no more interest in learning more, well, there it is. I tried to read a book on
tactics once. I fell asleep looking at the cover.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think I ever brought anything
more to the table than breadth. Watching the rest of Major League Soccer let me
measure Portland against the rest of the league, to see what they had and that we
didn’t. (And who noticed how rarely I used the word “we” in the posts? Never felt right,
that’s why.) Take away that context, and I’m just another half-educated twit
watching one team play a succession of other teams that I basically know
nothing about. Without the other teams' “status” for reference, about the only
way I could say anything truly novel would be if I watched games closely enough
to the flag in-game tactical adjustments. Because I’ve never been able to spot
that kind of thing in 20+ years of trying, well, there it is.
As recently as Sunday, I thought I’d gut it out the rest of
the year, but, looking at what I’ve posted lately (actually, couldn’t be moved
to do even that), I didn’t see the point. So, yeah, traffic’s slow, grill’s
turned off, and both cooks have already started drinking. The shop’s closing
early.
I’ll be adjusting my social media presence, replacing the “Conifers
& Citrus” name on my twitter handle with something else, etc. (that “etc.” also includes blocking the 100+ porn bots that follow my twitter). I’ll
direct things to the other site (A Project of Self Indulgence), going forward and
shifting that will probably take a couple days, just so I can keep anyone who
cares current. Keep following what I’m doing if you want to, but don’t feel
obliged. It’ll be some mixture of politics, culture and music, and…something
else. I’m still wrestling with what I want to fill the balance my idle hours.
God willing I’ll make it something productive. Then again,
God’s dead, last I heard.
Thanks to anyone who ever read this – and a sincere THANK
YOU to anyone who ever read this site regularly, or even told me they appreciated
my writing. You never really know if anyone is happily
receiving the transmission till that someone tells you, and getting positive feedback truly does wonders for overcoming writer's block. I’ve made acquaintance
with a lot of good people doing this, and have actually met and got to know more than a few solid citizens. As much as I want to list a bunch of names and give everyone his/her
due, I know it’d end in some boilingly misguided attempt to be acknowledge
everyone, only to inevitably leave off someone both deserving and important,
and they’d feel like shit, and I’ll feel dumb and like shit, and so on. With
that, I think the only person I can properly acknowledge would be (to use his
twitter handle) @shotboxer, aka, the human gateway drug, through whom I got to
meet and talk to many, many good, smart and interesting people. I hope I run
into some of you again, and not too many days from now.
It’s been fun, honest. Trouble is, it stopped being fun.
And, well, there it is.
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