After Six Months of The Memory Tourist, Was It Worth It?

The website's namesake

On March 20, I launched The Memory Tourist with a simple request. I wanted to find an outlet for my writing that not only would keep me productive but help me to deal with the ongoing pandemic. One of the only things that have remained consistent since that time has been uncertainty as to when the Coronavirus will go away, returning the world to a normal place. I still have days where I’m riddled with anxiety and others where I don’t feel like keeping up with this website. The hours and effort have been as much a blessing as they have a hurdle for those few days when life gets in the way, where I realize that a near 200,000 Americans have died from the virus and that my home state is on fire.

With all of that said, I like to personally think that my life would be a lot worse if I hadn’t taken initiative. For starters, I am rarely more satisfied than when I’ve written something substantial, realizing that I’ve created something that not only perfectly expresses myself, but has the potential to connect with others. In this short time, I feel like I have achieved more in reaching out than I had with my previous website Optigrab in the past three years. This isn’t to say that those times were bad, but they feel shortsighted compared to what I’ve achieved now. I was selling my skills short, not really allowing my work to reach its full potential.

The most obvious way that I’ve personally connected with others can be found over on Twitter, which has helped my average daily page views climb continually over the past few months. I’ve also been recognized for my writing by great people like Ben Brainard and Matt Patches along with many other people who have liked and shared my writing. I have found more friends, specifically in the film community, because I have become more eager to explore and share what I discover with others. My Followers count in this time has grown by over 150 new faces. I’m very close to reaching 500 Followers, and while it’s small compared to the quadruple digits, it feels like a major breakthrough given how long it’s taken me to even get there.

I suppose it all comes back to how I’ve felt about my work. The question that I have to ask myself: was this gambit worth it? After all, writing 1,500-2000 word essays daily can be exhausting if you’re not passionate about your subject. To me, it was a challenge to focus and try to make myself a better writer. While I still write reviews and shorter content at The Oscar Buzz, The Memory Tourist is a new experiment in trying to mix the cultural with the personal. To me, I want to be more open and proud of who I am. For the first time in my writing career, I feel like my work perfectly reflects that. With the website’s tagline “A look at a life through the media that helped define it” I feel that I allowed my relationship to media to be given new wrinkles, able to understand that our passions are as much from the experience as it is the content itself.

It doesn’t make sense that it took this long to have this revelation, but then again Optigrab was such an easy fallback. You can see me grow from a rambunctious upstart to someone finding their voice over those 12 years. The Oscar Buzz is a more polished (and successful) example of this and reflective of my interest in film history and news. But The Memory Tourist would exist as something more abstract even within its familiar themes. It was going to reflect the writing that I actually enjoyed reading, specifically from authors like Nathan Rabin and Emily Van Der Werf, who aren’t just compelling because of what they review, but how they look at it.

That is why, as I had a panic attack in early March, I felt the need to change. I wasn’t actually writing stuff that I would read on a whim. I am proud of what I did at Optigrab, but the lack of daily updates convinced me that it wasn’t that significant. Most of all, it was impersonal enough that it felt more like writing prompts than something that I was passionate about half of the time. Outside of year-end lists, I was pretty much on autopilot. When COVID-19 hit, I realized that I had no way to deal with it because Optigrab felt too small to detail these events. I couldn’t just reinvent it. I had to try something new entirely.

The Memory Tourist, a reference to a Don Hertzfeldt short, was birthed with the plan to explore everything that I was passionate about. More than anything, it would force me to finally try and do things that I wanted to do for years but never had context for. I wanted to try my hand at reviewing new music, cover sports, and even explore marketing. These were fringes of my identity that hadn’t really been allowed to be explored, so for the first time writing about things like The Milwaukee Bucks and Pepsi Blue allowed me to give in to impulse. As a result, I feel like a bigger dork. I’ve been allowed to be happier and feel like my work was more reflective of who I am when I’m not writing about film.

Even for things that have been more time-sensitive, I like to think that I gave them a spin that would make them entertaining to read in a few years, to look back and wonder what it was like to care about these inconsiderable things. While I feel like you could play a drinking game with how many times I put things into context with COVID-19, I think it provides a perspective that is essential not only to the consumption of art but of my psychology with things. I feel it’s important to explore the changing tides of Black Lives Matter or how the presidential election is affecting my mentality. This is the first time that I feel like I have an outlet, and while I still think some of it reads as inconsequential to longtime readers, it feels like an essential part of this website’s DNA. This is who I am. It feels good to say.

Something that feels important as a writer is the constant sense of discovery. The reason that I'm often more forgiving of bad art is because I’m more interested in the intent of the creator. Nobody starts out knowing what they want. Some think they do, but I guarantee that those who are deep in the trenches of a project will be face to face with a moment where an idea sparks. You couldn’t access it any earlier because you didn’t see the pattern before. Your head was clouded with these strange ideas of what you think you want. It’s frankly sad if you don’t have a crossroads while working on any project, realizing something as simple as a singular or plural word use could make a difference in how a sentence reads.

Because of my self-appointed goal of publishing a minimum of nine posts weekly, I am constantly forced to discover myself. There are days when I’ll look at my topics and wonder why I picked them. On a rare occasion, I have even changed them midway through an essay, finding that I just can’t reach my word count. I recognize what I’m passionate about and find ways to communicate on art in general. I’m still not a great music critic, but I want to be able to understand how a song can impact your mood, make a difference in how we see the world. I know that I’ve been stubborn in some respects, but I’ve tried to be open to new genres because I personally believe it’s more exciting to be curious than close-minded. It’s not only to give me page views. It’s to make the world feel bigger.

One of the recurring ideas for The Memory Tourist is to try and find positivity in the world. I don’t try to write everything like a smear campaign. To me, that’s boring. Even as satire, you find voices like The Nostalgia Critic who are stuck in one mode and the joke is that “I hate everything.” On occasion it’s funny, but that’s because animosity is cheap and addictive. I don’t understand those who post three-hour videos on YouTube about why the new Star Wars trilogy is terrible. It’s okay to dislike something, but understand that art is subjective entertainment. To let it make your day worse only hurts yourself.

I don’t like everything that I write about on here, but I try to find ways to be constructive in my criticism. If nothing else, I see myself as an entertainer, needing to provide something more joyful in a time where despair is everywhere. It’s thankfully forced me to spend my days not wallowing in the 24/7 news cycle, which alone has helped my psychology. On that front alone, I’ve achieved my goal. Even if I’m the only person who ever reads my work, those hours researching and editing is time I take away from sitting around, feeling hopeless, and worrying that the world is going to burn down. 

It’s not that I don’t have those fears, but I try to contextualize them in something more meaningful than icky name-calling. I do allow myself to break away from art every now and then to get personal, such as when the death of Elijah McClain hit me hard. He was autistic and walked down the street with his headphones. He was innocent, and he didn’t deserve the treatment he got. I’ve allowed myself, for the first time, to openly write these posts without concern with how it alters the appearance of the website. If anything, it’s only another part of the bigger picture. I need to write about what concerns me, or else I’m not being truthful with myself.

With six months gone, I have to ask if this experiment was worth it. Even as I prolong using the Patreon that I set up four months ago, I realize for the first time that I have something substantial. I have a reason for you to spend more time with me and read content that is specific to my interests. I personally don’t have a good enough angle for that yet. I’m not a businessman. I don’t know how to advertise and I’ve been too lazy to do the research. I’m rational that my Patreon won’t be a phenomenon, though I’ve been eager to see how that goes. 

Because after all, I am used to striking out. My prediction that The Bucks and The Los Angeles Clippers would make it to the finals accidentally predicted who was leaving in the second round. Sometimes you just have to accept fate. Like I keep saying, you have to learn from your mistakes and hopefully stay positive. The Memory Tourist has been cathartic for me and I am a happier person because of it. It gives my life order and focus when I need it most, and it’s in some ways reinvigorated my passion for it. Frankly, some weeks I have TOO MUCH to get out and that’s a blessing to have.

It’s doubtful that I will be writing updates every six months on how I feel. This one felt special because it means that I was able to push myself for at least half a year, to make this a reality that would have a profound change with how I see myself as a writer. I may not always be in top form, but forcing yourself to keep trying only gets you closer to the next thing that you want to do. I haven’t gone a day since March 20 without publishing something on this website, and I’m proud of that fact. While I predict that a post-pandemic version of this website will be cutting back as I try to find steadier work, for now, I hope to keep this alive and expanding in even more interesting directions. I’m thankful for everything it’s allowed me to do, and I hope that there are even more surprises on the horizon.