2016, 2017, 2019, and today!

What do those years have in common? The last times I logged in! Ha!

My last blog was all about how to find the places I posted my fics, and almost being done with college; how time flies! I've been out of college now for like, six years? And now we're in a pandemic! Past-Jimbo would have never imagined!

I updated my Fanfiction.net header at one point last year during the pandemic, because it still referenced 4chan! Yikes!! Small favors, sometimes you can look back on your internet footprint and see how far you've grown!

I took a step back from fanfiction writing, simply because being in college/about to graduate meant I was very busy, and partly because I didn't get a lot of interest. I wasn't writing NSFW, I wasn't writing Fallout crossovers; it felt like my sweet little slice-of-life fanfics sorta fell between the cracks, especially because I wrote a good chunk of them for M/M pairings. I mean, they didn't even want to publish them on Equestria Daily; that was kind of the kiss of death back then! I also fell out of love with the fandom (toxic BNFs will do that!), and I focused my energy on other endeavors. I think some of it also felt overwhelming; I was trying to update like, five different in-progress stories at one point, and I just couldn't manage my time to progress on all of them evenly. Plus, who was I even battling this out for? It's only been later that people started to realize my stories were some of the earliest (THE earliest, if I'm not mistaken!) MLP: FiM stories on fanfiction.net, before FIMFiction existed. Plus, I can't account for the quality of my fics. It's been a decade at this point!

The Everfree Northwest fanfic competition intrigued me, back in 2015, even after I stepped away from the fandom; but I didn't want to enter with this screenname, partly because I thought I might be recognized, whether for good or for ill. There of course was the option of being judged for fandom participation, or lack thereof; a new name, then, wouldn't have any history to critique. In the end, I entered under a whole new name, and sort of went on from there.

I've been writing, all this time; most of it is simply self-indulgent role playing games I play with my friends, or little stories I would write about our original characters, which is why it will never be published. But I'm still kickin'!

I'm not sure what I hope to get out of this little blog post, exactly; I never had a lot of followers on here! But I hope you are all doing well, wherever you have gone after the Brony thing passed (or didn't!), and I hope the past decade has been wonderful for you. I hope you are all still writing, wherever you are, or still reading! I saw that one of the two people I used to follow on here (DoctorDapples) had one final update about publishing a book several years ago. Wow! Talk about living the dream! I hope when I post another blog, maybe a few years in the future, I'll have something cool like a book to share, too.

Wishing you all the best,
Jimbo