“To all the people watching, I can never ever thank you enough for your kindness to me and I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality, and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they would get, but if you work hard and you’re kind, I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”

-Conan O’Brien

When he says this.  Especially when his voice quivers during that first sentence.  It kills me.

Go watch the last episode here or just skip to about 31 minutes in to see the entire final sign-off.

So.  This blog was a failure.  Sorry.

I’ve gotten busy doing all sorts of things that I don’t care about, that don’t fulfill me entirely, that involve things like “paying bills” (what is that?) and “being an adult” (again, I’m not understanding these terms).

However, this has prompted me to reevaluate both my writing workflow and what I want to do.  It’s also given me a chance to look objectively at what’s been going on with the few digital sites I own and to reevaluate what should go into them, what will be most productive for me (as a writer) and what will be moderately entertaining to you.

I’m not writing regularly.  I want to.  I need structure, though.  I’d also like to move my work more towards the “creative nonfiction” path with a goal of producing one good idea, one piece, one jumping off point per week.  Many readers here know that I’m obsessed with This American Life (even my glasses resemble Ira Glass’s).  Growing up, every Saturday, my Dad would listen to public radio from 8 until 2.  In this timespan, many great shows came on (Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Whaddya Know) but the one I’ve always loved most was This American Life.  Who better to serve as a guide for new projects and structure than the the person (Mr. Glass) who was the reason I decided to start telling stories all those years ago.

And so, from now on, on this blog, you’ll find some sort of meditation of mine pertaining to This American Life’s weekly theme.  Whether it’s a full blown story, an idea, a character sketch, whatever, it’ll be here.  I’ll post the week’s theme, a link to the original podcast, and then my work pertaining to it.

In this way, I think the theme of the blog will remain and a title/format change doesn’t need to take place.  Still, I’m interpreting, mish mashing up, working things out, and trying to communicate them to someone, somewhere.  It’ll all get lost and smushed up and contorted into face-cringing positions along the way, but that’s the point of Destructive Interference: To see what shows up at the end of that process.

As always, if you have thoughts of any sort (or if you elect to write something of your own pertaining to this theme) please share them in the comments.  If there are full blown entries, I’ll be glad to post them to the blog, as well (and give you full credit, of course).  I especially welcome comments or ideas about this whole change immediately.

For the more pithy side of me, please do check out I’m Appalled.com.  I’ll be getting short-form angry/funny on there as much as possible.

Thanks.  See you all on the other side.

Testing out posting from my iPhone. This could get weird.