As Road Reality approaches its 11th year of existence, a lot has changed since its inception. It began as a conversation about cars in a cigar shop and ended with me creating this web site. It was a lot of fun to shoot pictures, drive new cars, and I had a lot of help along the way, mostly in the form of dealership access to a fleet of vehicles. Since then, my life has changed. Marriage, kids, dogs, changing hobbies – it’s been quite a ride. With all the complexities of life, it’s become more work than fun for the type of content I used to create. Have you noticed I haven’t done an Owner’s Log update on my 2019 RAM 1500 since February? Life gets in the way. Priorities, am I right?
With a focus on family and other hobbies, the dealership connections dried up, and so did my motivation and time. This leaves less time for combing through photos and doing a multitude of edits on an article before hitting the “Publish” button. Then there was the site itself: too focused, too rigid. It’s time to shake things up! This mostly means creating content for the Road Reality YouTube channel, but in all fairness, it’ll be a bunch of disconnected posts about things that interest me.
I was going to wait until I had posted my first YouTube video (OK, don’t count the few I created in 2013), but why? To have a better launch for a personal blog? That didn’t make sense, and it would keep you from seeing the process behind the creation – and isn’t THAT the point? All the behind-the-scenes tech purchases and setups, editing, photography … those are just as interesting to me as the end result!
So no more car reviews (unless the opportunity arises), no more Owner’s Log filling up the home page. Posts announcing YouTube videos (and probably explaining them), daily musings and goings-about, and mixing in the rest of my obsessions hobbies along the way. Instead of Chronicling the Ever-Changing Automotive Industry, which has been the tag line and mission statement for almost eleven years, we’ll be (yes, you’re included!) journeying along One Man’s Reality on the Road of Life. The goal now is to increase the fun, while lightening up the reading load. A typical car review on this site took 10-20 minutes to read (and hours to edit!). I’m aiming for 1-5 minutes of reading time. More pictures, less text, more fun, less work! Isn’t that a better goal?
If you enjoyed checking up on my personal vehicles, fret not dear reader! Rather than taking notes over a 3-month period and compiling it into an Owner’s Log post, I’ll snap a few pics, add some text, and post a quick update on the site. Again, more fun, less work. You can easily decide whether a specific post is worth your time to read, or pass on it and keep a lookout for something that does interest you.
The next phase of Road Reality will be more of a personal blog – with all the non-sequiturs that come with that – than the focused (and frankly, dry) one Road Reality has been. Let’s have fun with it!
Is there a topic you want to see me delve into? Let me know!
Just in case someone arrives here looking for past content, I’ll be leaving it all there, but that’s the road behind us, so let’s concentrate on the future!
-John