Why I Haven’t Been Writing As Many Articles

August 14, 2020

To be quite honest with you all (and if you’re reading this I know you’re one of the tight knit group that reads nearly every article), I kind of dreaded writing this article. However, I knew that if I simply pushed new content I’d get questions and while I don’t mind answering questions, I think it’s important to offer some thoughts on why I haven’t written a new article in quite some time.

Well, in all seriousness, there’s a multifaceted answer to that question. Some of it is personal, some of it is the state of the Disney parks over the last few months, and part of it is simply other things going on. I’ll start with the most difficult part for me and the most difficult part to try and explain. As always, I’ll lay it all out there because I think that if my experiences could help even one person facing something similar, it’s worth sharing.

Now, obviously I’m not going to mention any names or share any overly personal info but to make a long story short I had a friend essentially cut me out of their life completely a short while back and it hit harder than I expected. It shakes your world more than a little bit when someone you speak to daily just up and disappears. That’s about all I’ll say on that side of things, but if you’ve been in that situation before, you likely know how it hits you like a ton of bricks at certain moments.

I refuse to blame anyone but myself for why it played out the way it did, but nonetheless it saps your motivation to write in a happy go lucky way. If you’re one of very very few that know that full story, please understand how appreciative of you I truly am.

Obviously, that’s a big reason, and I only share it because I feel that I owe an explanation to many of you that have been here from the very beginning. However, at about the same time, Disney World closed for the first time ever for an extended period of time right when life felt like it was starting to normalize and move in a positive direction again.

Now, I understand Disney isn’t the end all be all beacon of happiness, but when you’re used to writing about it almost daily as an “escape” from reality, it hits home a bit harder than it would for an average parks guest. I know I’m not the only one who felt that way either. When you’re used to mentally having a place that you can escape to (even simply metaphorically), and that place is the parks, it’s hard to let your mind wander there without thoughts of it being inaccessible creeping in. Call it sappy, but that was my reality for a bit.

On the other hand, there was a very real reason for not posting as well and maybe this is a little personal as well. I could not, in good conscience, push traveling planning articles, hidden gems of the parks, and any array of my normal content because it felt like the wrong thing to do. You all know me, I’m not a clickbait news kind of guy and I don’t really like sharing anything here that isn’t some variation of positive. I wasn’t finding that in the day to day Disney updates and I decided I was going to refuse to push anything that didn’t feel right to share in the moment. Sure, the numbers fell off rapidly, but I also realized I was missing the point of doing what I was doing if I was concerned about a number on a screen.

At the same time, I started a new Late Night Disney LIVE Facebook Show called After Hours – Let’s Talk Disney with two of my best friends in the Disney space and that captured my interest more than anything else. Before I knew it, I had requests to be interviewed by podcasts pop up and I quickly realized those were the things that really kept me excited about Disney and kept my interest level at an all time high. As a result, the website got pushed a little bit further down the list but honestly I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

I was loving it and every day was enjoyable! That amazing reality also came with a gut check though. it was a realization that I was wiring on the site for the wrong reasons. It wasn’t about the community back before all this occurred, and now I wanted to make a change. I’ve adopted this mindset of community over everything and I hope that continues to grow over time. I revamped the The Guide4WDW Group on Facebook, we dove in and are now on our 13th After Hours LIVE show, and I’m trying my best to encourage conversation on Instagram any and every opportunity I have to do so.

Lastly, and perhaps most surprisingly, I’ve been a little burnt out by the Disney space. It seems like every time you post something, every time you write something, or every time you offer an opinion, there’s always something negative being found in every situation revolving around WDW right now. Unfortunately it’s the nature of the beast, but at the end of the day it’s not an encouraging and positive atmosphere and it’s not content that I can put my heart behind knowing that it will positively impact someones day. So, I chose not to write.

I do owe you all some articles and they will be coming soon, but I’m in a mindset now that is going to make me very cautious of topics that I choose to share. At the end of the day, my thoughts right now can be boiled down to one phrase. I want this to be a happy place. It sounds so trivial and border line corny, but it’s no secret that the world around us isn’t quite what it used to be and now it’s more important than ever to share what’s good and avoid what doesn’t quite feel like the right things to share.

Overall, if you’re reading this, thank you. Even if you’re the person I mentioned that disappeared, thank you. Everything is a stepping stone to a better place in life (as hard as that is to write with everything going on in not only my life but all of our lives right now). I’m so incredibly grateful for the life I get to live and that’s easy to lose sight of sometimes.

I’ll leave you with this… No matter what we face in our day to day lives there is something to be happy about in every single day. We just have to find it! Life’s too short to let anything ruin what you enjoy out of the simplest blessings life throws our ways.