Confessions

I have a confession to make. I’ve been watching you all watching me. This isn’t some sort of bad song reference – it’s true. I’ve installed various traffic analysis codes onto my blog so I can see how many people are coming to visit, and often, where they’re from. It’s almost like installing a security camera above my virtual door. So, I’ve been spying on you. I suppose it’s only fair, because – although all blogs is painfully public and some sort of cry for attention – you have sort of been spying on my life too. It’s only fair that I know who is doing it, right?

The reason I make this confession now is because I have noticed that in the past couple of weeks, people have been spying on me much less often than they were doing a couple months ago. I may be incorrect, but I do believe that it is not because the content is getting any more boring or because the pictures are getting any more poorly taken. I am guessing – it is just Wayne-overload. (Of course, if it is something else, please do tell!)

I can’t say that I blame you. Most of you have been following the blog faithfully since I started it 5 months ago. That’s 150 plus days of reading about my inane thoughts and getting half-finished stories about people who have stories far more interesting than my own. It’s sixty plus entries of me searching around for answers to questions that I don’t even have a handle on how to properly pose yet. It is thousands upon thousands of words of text with very few interesting pictures or videos accompanying them. It is countless minutes of skimming through the blog to see if I met my wife somewhere in the world yet. It is, in essence, an incredible expression of how your general kindness towards other human beings begets impressive and copious amounts of patience for me. =) So, I understand if your attention span is wavering.

I have another confession to make. Mine is also. Keeping up the energy and focus necessary to write a blog, and to pursue a book project has been more difficult than even I had imagined. Almost ten years ago I moved to China with the young and idealistic notion that I was going to pursue travel writing. As I wrote at the start of the project – the fact that I failed to do so was a key impetus for me to pursue Backpacking. Now I know though, if I had tried to do this ten years ago, it’s safe to assume that I would not have been able to complete it. There are days where I sit down at my computer, open up a blank Word document, and then stare at it for thirty minutes before I realize that I just don’t have anything to say. I think before I would have stopped staring at the screen after just five minutes, but now, the weight of a decade of unfulfilled idealism has led to me persevering for that extra 25 minutes. That’s what I call progress. Growth. Something to be proud of. Seriously though, the discipline required to ensure that I keep up with my writing is still something that I am working on acquiring. For now, I’m happy to say that I’m further along than I thought I would be on the blog. Now, with just one month of (intensely hot =[ ) traveling left, I am beginning to contemplate how to translate this momentum (and all of these travel experiences) into a book. So, hang in there with me! And I promise, free e-postcards for everyone at the end of the trip! Hehe.