Not that any of you asked, but a while back, deftlyinane.com went away. It was where I had been doing a lot of my writing through the years. There was some personal stuff in there. I vented about my crappy old clothes dryer. I wrote about the night I got engaged to my wife, who is now ready to have our first son. I wrote a lot of stupid stuff too. Once, I ate some tilapia cooked by Coolio and got sick. I wrote about it.
I’d founded that site as a place where I could write and have other people read it, because I didn’t really have any platform before. It attracted a small audience, but it was fun. If there was something on my mind, I could write it and publish it, and that’d be it. I felt like I had a lot to say, and so I said it often.
But by happy accident in 2009, I had a piece published in Charlotte magazine about a blind hiker who completed the Appalachian Trail. That piece led to more pieces from Charlotte, which led to pieces in Our State magazine, which all led to some pieces on SB Nation Longform. I now have a blog at charlottemagazine.com, and I’m able to turn stories on-air and online at NBC Charlotte that I want to do. Weird stuff ends up at wcnc.tumblr.com. And, as of now, I’ve tweeted more than 26,000 times since I joined Twitter in 2009. In short, I’ve gone from having one place to say something to many places to say something.
I’ve been gracious for the luck I’ve had. But as with anything, when people ask you to do things, and they’re willing to pay you for those things, you mentality starts to change. Writing is an outlet, but it’s become more and more of a side business. I’m lucky enough to be able to offer things and have things offered to me, but now it has to fit inside an increasingly crowded schedule, one that has grown, since 2010, to include a girlfriend, and then wife, and soon a son, all wrapped around a full time job. I love to write, to explore, to explain and to learn, and I’m grateful that many people have given me the chance to do so. But I’m also more aware that time is a precious resource.
Which brings me back to deftlyinane.com. I hadn’t posted there in two years because I was posting in many other places. It felt somewhat embarrassing to be pointing people to a site that featured my skills as a writer and included a blog that had been dormant since 2012. I let the website’s registration lapse, and one day, it was gone.
I still have the archive from the site, and I’ll probably be posting some of it here. I created this site because I wanted to have a landing page to link people to my work. I wanted to look forward as well as back. And from time to time, when I have something to say that, inexplicably, doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere else, I’ll be able to say it here.
That’s it, really. Not that anyone really cared. Deftly Inane was just sort of a moniker that I came up with years ago. No reason. I thought it was clever. I’m still a little bit embarrassed to say it out loud. I made it my Twitter handle because it was a fad back then to use something creative instead of your real name. I used it for the website too. Now, the site is gone, but I’m on to the next thing, which is exciting and for which I’m always grateful.