Six years.
If you were to tell me back in August of 2020 that this little "hobbyist" blog would still be alive and kicking, I would not have believed you.
Yet, here we are.
Over the past 365 days, there were 17 posts published. Which, I am aware is a massive decline from previous years.
So, I'll be using this post to explain where I've been at, and how ZachsThoughts will evolve to keep up with the times, or more so make sure I don't go further off the deep end.
What Were The Posts?
A majority of the new posts were reviews, but there were a few general commentary entries that were published as well. The notable aspect of the reviews were the video games. This was the first time I uploaded a relevant piece of media: 007 First Light's review, shortly after release.
The other major cultural relevance the blog had was the ongoing "monitoring" of The Amazing Digital Circus, which blew up in a good way.
In terms of general commentary: The Board of Directors Problem was my favorite post to write on. It's something that resonates with all of us, even if we may each call it something different. The idea of having a close circle of confidantes is what makes us human. So it was a worthwhile post to draft and develop.
There are two major reasons why there wasn't much more activity here.
Writer's block: shocking absolutely no one.
The hectic quasi-chaos that is my life.
We'll dive more into the latter reason, as it's more entertaining and less "I had no idea what to write and froze when I put the pen to the paper".
Life.
At school, I have become involved in the university's student-run PR firm. By involved, I mean that I somehow rose through the ranks and was elected Firm Director (i.e. chief executive officer) of the firm.
It was the toughest election ever, as I won in a total landslide.
Over the past few months, I have been working with my Executive Team to refine the firm's infrastructure, so we can jump back into the upcoming Fall semester and greatly expand our capabilities.
TLDR: The Firm has been draining my life essence. But we'll manage!
Outside of the firm, I have been spending the past 10 weeks interning at a major advertising conglomerate in the rare healthcare division, where I assisted (i.e. observed hundreds of Microsoft Teams calls) with the launches of three therepautic services. What are they? Who knows! Legal told me not to say.
Okay, so what about ZachsThoughts?
Over the past few years, I have outlined a vision where ZachsThoughts would be this fully-fledged media brand with different content ideas and niches and more.
Obviously, it can be quite clear that it didn't quite work out.
It is very hard to build any sort of following as a blogger, content creator, writer (and so on) if you are only doing it part-time and have other commitments. To that end, it is sad but true to say that I have come to the conclusion that the best thing for ZachsThoughts to be is a hub for my sporadic reviews.
But where, you may ask, will the rest of my writing be published? After all, I do like (and want) to publish more than reviews. Some of my most successful posts were the general commentary, and they are diamonds in the rough. To remedy this: all non-review posts will begin to be exclusively published on Contemplations Of A Raised Ranch, my "secondary" blog, that will turn into more of an equal.
By August 31, I aim to push a new update to both sites that reduces the technical confusion between the two, and allows users to clearly access the other in a seamless manner.
Finally, I want to mention to email subscribers that the email domain for the newsletters will be changing to keep everyone under the same roof across all of my writing platforms, as people subscribed to see all of my writing when it’s published. Beginning with the next post, emails will be originating from [email protected]. The current “mail.zachsthoughts.com” subdomain will be “retired” and forwarded to blog.zacharyaustrager.com/newsletter.
What's to Come
I can confirm that there will be posts for two television shows: Stuart Fails To Save The Universe and President Curtis that will hopefully be released within the next month. Now that I'm done with my internship, there is a slightly higher chance they will be written out.
There may also be some new travel reviews coming in 2027. But I don't want to jinx anything or confirm/deny anything not ready yet ;)
Regardless of everything that has occurred and may occur, thank you for reading and supporting ZachsThoughts. Here's for six years, and for hopefully many more than six years to come.