I’ve been doing some soul searching lately. Nothing transcendent, transcendental, or byzantine, I just haven’t been able to figure out what to talk about on this blog. I am accustomed to having a predetermined mission statement: sell software, help create thought leadership, talk about cool motorcycles. I am not used to this kind of wild and irresponsible creative freedom! I feel like the proverbial actor who loses himself in so many roles, he doesn’t know how to be himself in the real world.

A multitude of loose ideas have been swirling around in my head. I REALLY wanted to expand beyond writing about writing and instead hone in on one of my passions that I don’t ever get to write about. But, there are no particularly burning topics in sports, gaming, or tech that I feel compelled to get off my chest. So, against my better judgment, I’m writing about writing. Worse yet, writing a blog post about the difficulty in writing a blog post. LAME!

I’ve finally decided to throw caution to the wind. The only thing worse than this topic is paralysis by analysis. So the hell with it. Let’s try some stream of consciousness.

Blake Griffin got traded just seven months after resigning with the LA Clippers for $173 million over five years. I feel like this is an admission of poor judgement on management’s part, specifically (now former) President of Basketball Operations Doc Rivers. Sure, they got salary relief (from a burden they just put on themselves) and a draft pick, but $173 million for a draft pick seems, excessive …

DJI recently introduced the Mavic Air to its industry-dominating lineup of drones. It falls neatly between the entry-level Spark and prosumer Mavic Pro by offering 4K video and a 3-axis gimbal in a nearly smaller footprint than its baby brother (smaller when folded up for storage). I just got my own Spark for Christmas — what a rush! I always wanted to be a pilot without all the risk. Done and done. Drones bring that classic tech-whimsy that iPhones, DSLRs, and Walkmans used to. I can’t wait to see what the future holds …

Far Cry 5 is about two months away from release. Video games suffer from a similar problem as films: they release teasers, trailers, and production details so far in advance of the actual release date, that I get crazy excited, cool off, nitpick those details, then eventually decide it’s not for me. When I first saw footage of the game around E3 last year, this game became an auto-buy despite the fact I haven’t played a Far Cry game since the original on PC (originally released in 2004!). Now I’m wavering. It doesn’t help that I went through the exact same process with Ghost Recon: Wildlands last year. It ended up a fun-ish, though one-dimensional, game. Note: if you think I’m rather juvenile to play such brutish games, I ask that you allow me this guilty pleasure. (I mean look, I used the word “byzantine” earlier. That’s got to count for something.) …

A Tribe Called Quest may have gotten frozen out of the Grammys, but that didn’t stop Dave Chapelle from giving them a big shout-out at the show. I’m a HUGE believer in the rule that if you critique a so-called snub, you are required to name who you’d drop (the same applies to all the major sports all-star games). So in the interest of the rules, I wouldn’t flinch if ATCQ stepped over Migos’ “Culture,” Rhapsody’s “Laila’s Wisdom,” or Jay Z’s “4:44” (yeah, that’s right — even Hov). Admittedly, I’ve never given “Culture” a listen. Maybe I’m just an old-school head shaking his fist, but I feel like Migos fall under a different subgenre. I gave “Laila’s Wisdom” a few runs, but it didn’t stick. I wanted to like it more. And though I love moments on “4:44,” they are far outweighed by the blasé. In the end, Jay got a lot of props for his willingness to air out his personal life. I can’t say that I’ve lost much sleep worrying about a guy cheating on “the hottest chick in the game” to have a three-way. Full disclosure: I’ve never listened to anything off “Lemonade.” Sue me. I do, however, enjoy some good chopped-up soul beats — I see you, No I.D.

So hey, this post started topic-less, but I managed to stream-of-conscious myself into a pu pu platter of topics. To bring it full circle, I apologize in advance for the disjointed nature of this blog. The most useful stuff I post will probably be my writing analyses. Until I figure out a more logical way to refine things, tangents like these will pop up. Ultimately, the point of this whole exercise is to show some competence with the written word, to give myself a wider platform than the stuff I’ve published professionally, and to keep my writing chops fresh — even if it’s at the expense of structure and focus.