After nearly a decade of inactivity on Project BlueSphere, I’ve decided to start writing again. I’ve redesigned the website for easier reading and feel the need to cast some honest content into the ever-growing void of modern-day content creators, social media “influencers,” and AI-generated noise.
I return a very different man. Somewhere along my journey, I got old.
In the last ten years, I had a beautiful marriage that ended terribly, for me at least. The war in Ukraine hit hard, not to mention the overall political climate and the general state of humanity.
But it was my divorce that really took its toll. I spent four years at the bottom of a bottle trying to find myself, only to discover that doesn’t really work. Eventually, I clawed my way back to sobriety. I’m told this isn’t an uncommon tale for a single-handed sailor.
I’ll quote two songs here that put my life into perspective.
U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was practically my mantra for most of my adult life. I spent decades burning across oceans, traveling and searching for something I couldn’t quite define.
I know how corny it sounds, but all I ever really wanted was love. To find my true partner. Someone to share this extraordinary journey with.
How wrong I was.
In the end, it was myself I was looking for all along.
Which brings me to Neil Young’s lyric, “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” from his 1979 song My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue). Kurt Cobain later quoted those very words in his suicide note in 1994.
I’ve spent the last four and a half years contemplating those words, trying to find the strength to fuel the fire once again. Desperately blowing on a dying ember, hoping to coax it back into flame.
Somehow, I managed. I crawled out of that substance-laden bottle and found a little fire left in me.
And now that I’m standing again, looking around, I feel like George Taylor in the original Planet of the Apes, emerging into a world only to discover that humanity has destroyed itself.
Goddamn, I want a drink just writing about this!
Seriously, what the fuck happened to the world during my absence?
Were my words and videos really the only things holding humanity together?
I know how ridiculous that sounds, but from my perspective, the timing kind of fits.
Moving forward, all I can promise are some honest words from an old sailor trying to figure it all out.
Thank God I’m on a boat and zombies can’t swim, because there are some seriously deranged “people” wandering around on shore.
When I do visit, I’ve become quite successful at camouflage. I can walk among them for short periods without being noticed. So far, anyway.
I’ll be writing here on www.ProjectBlueSphere.com, with occasional teasers posted to Facebook and Instagram. Truthfully, I don’t want people reading or commenting on my work on any Meta platform. I don’t want to be personally drawn back into that world. I’d rather my readers experience my words, photographs, and films in a friendlier environment, for both our sakes.
I originally sat down to write a test blog for the redesigned website, but somewhere along the way, I found a little humanity worth sharing.
I’m not happy, nor am I particularly content. But I’ve found something to hold on to again.
I write, therefore I am.
At some point, I forgot that.
I don’t write for you, and I don’t write for attention. I’m a solitary man, and this is simply how I express myself. The container holding my thoughts is boiling over, and I need to release some steam.
I hope the rest of you are doing okay. From my rather remote perspective, much of humanity seems to be circling the drain.
I’ll do my best to write our way out of it and perhaps make friends with the apes I’ve discovered on shore.
They’re a difficult bunch, though, and I fear they may hurt one another.
Peace.
Sail far and live slowly.
