What a year… 2020 hit us all I think where we least expected it, and it hit hard.

I think I’ve come across more people this year that are just tired of the daily grind than ever before. A few of my friends haven’t had jobs since March/April and others are working in jobs that are now paying way less than the ones they’d had before the pandemic because of shutdowns etc.

We carved a swath of stress for ourselves this year. I think worry became the motif that fueled our society, especially in the small town I live in. We were either full force worried that COVID would wipe us out, or we were in a dead panic about the shutdowns and plotting how to survive a violent takeover and really, I think at the end of the day it was just… people, (in some cases) literally trying to survive.

But enough of that, you’ve heard about the pandemic enough for one year, our struggle with it isn’t going to end and I don’t want to round out my final post of the year with worry or doubt or debate. I just wanted to say thank you. I was away from the blog for two years or so between all the time I spent not writing/posting, and when I announced Mean for the Holidays it was as if I’d never gone anywhere, so thank you for that.

I’ve learned the value of long breaks, this year, essentially being forced to take a long break from everything except my wife was a good refresher, it was a good tool to gauge my priorities by. Somewhere in the middle of the year I started cooking up projects and ideas, and I had a sit down with my wife and we talked about what our future looks like. I planted a seed in my mind years ago and she kind of illuminated for me, multiple times now, what I need to do in my personal life to make sure that seed grows strong. So, this year, in case you missed the post on Grimoire of Finality I decided to publish long-term goals similarly to a few other authors I follow online. It’s something I’ve considered doing most years, and then chicken out because I’m afraid of committing to a real plan. I can say things are one way all I want in my mind but if the deadlines are coming up and I haven’t told anyone the deadline, I can just move it. You can read about it a bit more over on the Grimoire. I published a projected plan for 2021 there because I wanted to have another way to hold myself accountable for the work I do. I’ve wanted to set up the Grimoire of Finality for a lotta years, and now that it’s finally here and I’ve had multiple conversations with my wife about the way I write and the goals/dreams I have set for myself, it’s time to change my habits up a bit.

That being said, I wanted to lay out a bit of that same energy here. Before this was Modern Alchemy and before I’d come up with a solid pattern to release content in, way back in 2016 I was publishing upwards of three pieces of content a week, most of the time I published four. The content then was separated into poetry, lifestyle content, and review-ish content. Since I created the blog, I’ve mashed a million topics into one, and to a degree, that isn’t going to change much. As I’ve grown with my writing and my purpose my desire for Modern Alchemy has changed a bit. If you want to see where I’m at now with content, you can read the full breakdown on the home page, but for the sake of this little cleanup post, I’ll keep it simple.

Modern Alchemy is broken into three primary topics, Faith, Inspiration, and Stories (Currently Literature.)

From this point forward, I want to put out consistent work, and good work. I don’t have a schedule in the way that I do for Grimoire of Finality because this blog feeds off of current events much more than the Grimoire, however, I do want to get into a two-three large post per month kind of schedule. The first few months will likely be pretty thin in comparison, but I want to publish a lot more short-form content here like poetry or snapshots about the things I enjoy. I’m also (if you haven’t noticed) angling a lot more of my content to be focused on Christianity and Biblical study/reference. This is a big change I’ve kind of been afraid to do for a long time. I had this idea in the back of my head that posting this kind of content would turn more people away than it would invite, but I have long had a gnawing at my heart to do something more akin to what I’m putting out now in regards to Faith. That being said, I want to make it extremely clear…

Modern Alchemy is NOT a Christian blog.

I, personally, am Born Again, and there will be many things dealing with Christianity and Bible Study and similar topics, but this blog is not a “Christian” blog, it is simply a collection of content written by a professing Christian. My bible commentary here is not supposed to be authoritative, they are studies, concepts, questions that I have, and want to share. They are things I learned and how I view the world around me through the lens of Scripture. That being said, I am not going to turn anyone away, for any reason. Moving forward, all of my Christian/Faith-based content will be clearly displayed with a + in the title. If you want to skip it, or you disagree with it, I won’t have any hard feelings. If you want to talk about it more, please do. I’d love to discuss anything with anyone.

In regards to the rest of my content, it will still fall into the other two categories, occasionally I’ll publish poetry and similar, but in most circumstances, I want to narrow the field I’m speaking to. This is an experiment, like everything else I do.

One more big update before I leave y’all for the remainder of the year, My regular program in March, Lifeis+ is scheduled to return in 2021. If you’ve never been, in the past it has been a 31-day marathon of content in the same vein as Mean for the Holidays, and while I’ve loved how I’ve used it in the past, this year it will be a bit different. I want to form a clean line between the Grimoire of Finality and Modern Alchemy. Despite that they are both branches of the business I’m running, they are meant for distinctly different crowds and they are built for different things. Lifeis+ won’t see nearly as much Grimoire of Finality content, and in the future, Mean for the Holidays won’t have nearly as much Modern Alchemy content. I feel like separating these things will allow me to build them to be much better in the future.

Now, I don’t want to take up much more of your time. It is after Christmas and we have but a short week of 2020 left. I want you to enjoy it as much as you can.

To Summarize:

I’m shooting to start releasing regular content on Modern Alchemy once more, I’ll be aiming for 2-4 posts a month, but this won’t be written in stone. I’d like to do more research and study for what I’ve been working on to provide better content for it.

Thank you for coming back to Modern Alchemy in force this month, I can’t tell you how much it means that you’re here and I am so excited for next year with you all.

I hope you had the Meanest Christmas and I’ll see you in January.

-AT