This is the first article I've written in a month and a half. I've had time. I've had things to talk about. I have no reason not to write. Then why don't I?

I have watched in the past as sites die. The author or authors start out somewhat enthusiastic about writing on the world wide web--writing where they can potentially be heard, where no matter who you are, someone out there cares. You can create a new persona if you like, or you can show your true personality to the world. Nobody will know the difference--and if I tell you I'm a 16-year-old boy from Florida, you have the option of believing me or assuming I'm a bloody liar. It's all very appealing to some people--myself included. That's why websites like mine start.

Then, slowly, for one reason or another, for one excuse or another, the author neglects the site for just longer than it should be neglected. Then the next time for longer, and longer still, until it's been a month and a half since the last time anyone who reads the site heard from its author. I've seen it all happen a thousand times before (on a side note, maybe all this time spent reading personal sites should have been devoted to something greater--but it's too late to worry about that now), and there's always a bit of sadness in me when a site closes--when an author gives up on the creation he was once so excited about. I don't want that to happen. Not for a while, at least.

It just occured to me--as it usually does after a while--that through some fluke, people are stumbling on this website, and in some cases exploring around. I want to give those people something to read, something to do, a reason to come here. Nobody wants to read the mindless, aimless, pointless rants I write around here. They have no reason to want to. And yet people come. I've got nothing to offer except my ideas--but people come. It perplexes me sometimes, and scares me others, that somebody out there--maybe a group of people from the four corners of the world--come here. Maybe they can relate to the things I write, maybe they've created worlds in their heads, maybe they've considered how much they're missing by not having eyes in the back of their heads, maybe they are just Nirvana fans. If the Internet has taught me anything, it's that there are a lot more good, decent people in the world than I once thought. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of jerks, a lot of wastes of sperm and eggs (Cobain Incesticide liner notes). But there are also a lot of nice people, people who think like me, who act like me, who do and feel like me. And suddenly thinking like me, acting like me, doing and feeling like me have all become things that separate "good, decent" people from everyone else. Talk about ego.

I write all my articles in Notepad. I never proofread them. I never so much as run a spell-check. I write it, and hope my 4:00 AM logic is as coherent to the rest of the world as it seems to be for me. It is very slipshod, usually ten-minute writings about whatever happens to be on my mind when I'm suddenly divinely inspired to write something. And I realize I go around in circles and repeat myself a lot, and in the end I manage to muddle up the situation even more. C'est le vie, as the French say--that's life.

I have several articles in my head right now, waiting to be written. I have a review of the Incubus concert in Orlando, complete with pictures from the show. I have memiors from my time as a camp counselor. I have something about working in a fireworks stand, and something no doubt to write about on Independence Day (not the movie). But, perhaps like the stories of my journey from Orlando to Tallahassee to Tampa Bay and back, perhaps like my review of Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones, perhaps like my End of the Schoolyear Extravaganza, they too will be put off until it would mean nothing at all to write them, and maybe they will never exist, and another month and a half, maybe another two months, or more, will go by. (There were way too many commas in that last sentence. Deal with it.) I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I'm not ready for this site to die. I'm just ready for a change. What does that mean for Joe's Hole? I don't know, it's something I'll think about. I know I'm going around in circles and repeating myself now (get it? Because I said that earlier, and I'm repeating the thing about me repeating myself? It's irony at it's best!), but we'll see how things end up for me and my site. Maybe I'll let you know some time. Or maybe I won't. Under the right circumstances, I could care less. (I don't know what that last sentence meant either.)

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