And So I'm Back... From Outer Space

Hey.

Again.

Or shall I go all Adele?

Hello, it's me.

Whatever. The point is, I'm back.

Believe me, I'm just as surprised as you. I honestly thought I'd never see this place again. Not for any particularly horrible reason. At the beginning, I was one hundred percent all in. I don't know what happened to me. I don't have a real excuse.

Like all things that require attention in one's life, this was something that I would keep putting off, saying I'll write something "next time" which wasn't a real promise because what the hell does "next time" even mean?

As more time goes by, it gets harder and harder to go back to something. Whether it be people, school, a blog. At some point you would say, "Well, it's already been this long. It's kinda too late to go back." Then you put it off again.

However, that doesn't mean you forget about it.

I always thought about my blog in the back of my mind. What I was able to accomplish, what more I could do with it, what it meant to me and what it could possibly mean to others.

Fast forward X amount of months. (My last post was in August and we are now Mid-February.)

So, long story short, I'm back. This time I'm doing things a little differently. Don't get me wrong, I loved what I had done before and there will still be more of that, but I'd love to align the focus of this blog with the goals that I'm focusing on in my real life.

First, you're probably wondering where the hell I was and what the hell I was doing? Was I cheating on this blog with another? HA. Good one. If I can't even pay attention to my original blog, what makes you think I can handle a secret blog?

Well, in my day-to-day life, I just kept doing my own thing. I've been to a billion concerts since then. As you've previously read, music is my life. I even took a road trip all the way to San Francisco with a friend so we could see Lana Del Rey and boy, was that an experience.

I'm mad at myself, because I wanted to write about that. I made sure to take some awesome photos, including the cheesy one in front of the Golden Gate bridge. It was so exciting and I wanted to share that with everyone, but that was around the time I had stopped posting on here.

It was early September and that month was a tough one. I couldn't sleep at all so I was actually diagnosed with insomnia. (Well, self-diagnosed.) But it sucked because I'd be up all night, bored and doing nothing and now that I'm thinking about it, I could've used a lot of that time to post on my blog.

Eventually it went away on its own. I can't remember when, but as of now, I'm sleeping just fine.

As the months went on, more concerts and music that I could've totally posted about, but didn't. I had so many ideas too. I was gonna do a year-end list for my top albums, but that didn't happen.

(Spoiler: Melodrama)

On previous publications, I did a lot of concert reviews and I'm the person that gets there super early to be up front and get kick ass pictures. Except for Imagine Dragons and Halsey because those were in bigger venues, so I wasn't as close, but they were still awesome, nonetheless.

But even though, I didn't write any of that for any blog, I did, however, keep up with my writing in other ways. I spent a lot of time working on my fictional stories. I even trudged back into a genre I never thought I'd go back to, especially as an adult. I won't get more into that, but I did end up finishing it, which is huge for me.

There was a time when it was a challenge for me to complete a story, due to the distraction from the other 11 stories that I'm constantly thinking about in my head, but sometimes due to loss of interest after a while.

But I'm proud of myself for finishing this story. It's given me a new hope. A new life, if you will. A new belief that I can fucking do this.

If I haven't made it clear before, I want to be a writer. I mean, obviously, I'm writing right now, but I don't want to be known as just a blogger. I want to be an author. I want to write stories, create worlds, represent different types of characters and topics and give a new perspectives in the form of books.

Heck, this may sound bananas, but you know what they say, reach for the stars. I wanna be the next fucking J.K. Rowling! Sure, it's a tall order, but I know me and I know i have good ideas. I've been writing for most of my life and I'd love to just continue doing that for the rest of it. This is what I wanna do. And I can do it.

I'm actually looking into getting some of my works published in the near future, as well as writing a bunch of new material. I'll talk more about those works when the time approaches. I'm excited so you should be too!

So, with that, I'd like to discuss the direction of my blog, I'm still in love with music, that'll never change, but I also wanted to focus more on books and literary works that inspire me, since that's the direction I'd like for my career. Expect more book reviews and author recommendations. Perhaps, a short story? (That'll be less likely. I don't usually write short stories, but who knows?)

As per usual, I promise to make everything I write queer as fuck! I'll focus a lot on visibility and representation in all aspects. For those of who have followed my writing from years back, I wrote an article where I was able to do an in-depth interview with one of my friends in the pansexual community. That was my most popular piece on the website I was writing for at the time and it filled me with joy to know that I reached so many people.

Here's the link to that article:

I'd love to do more pieces like this. Educating folks on my fellow members of the queer community and shedding light on the letters of the acronym who don't get as much visibility. I've actually stopped using the acronym and simply refer to us as the 'queer community.' In the words of a wise friend, "We're all some shade of queer."

My reason for not using the acronym is that so many people shorten it to LGBT because it's "too long" or they don't feel like saying the whole thing. Well, that shows that you don't actually care about all of us because there are "too many" to consider. People like to pick and choose who they wanna include.

What about Asexual individuals? Where is the Intersex representation? And when people do extend the acronym, they say LGBTQIA. Umm what about the P? To my understanding, it should be LGBTQIAP. Pansexual people exist. Believe me, I've hung out with them, hugged them, been in a car with them. They're real. So, why are we forgetting about them? I guess it's not surprising since the world still continues to misrepresent trans and bisexual folks too.

So, I want to conduct more of these educational interviews with real members of each community as a way to give information to those who don't quite know, because a scary amount of people are unaware.

And I know it's not my job to educate people. If they want to be ignorant, that's up to them. But if they do choose to seek information, I want them to get it from reliable sources. Of course, every person is different. In my interviews, it will be from one perspective, but that doesn't invalidate their experiences or make it any less true. If you ask 100 different people, you're going to get 100 different answers.

I'm just tired of getting improper representation from people who don't actually know what it's like. So, I wanna do my best to get that visibility out into the world.

In addition, with all the shit happening everywhere, we got a lot to discuss. I know, with where I've gone so far with my writing, I haven't been the biggest social or political voice. I'd like to change that. A lot of things happening affect me and the people I love and I'm a person with opinions. It's my right to voice them. So, I'll try to be more present in those situations.

In conclusions, I'm just happy to be back and I feel I'm in a great place with my writing. I not only want to post more often on here, I need to. It's important to me and it shows that I can set a plan and follow through.

Also, when I first started, I promised a "playlist of the week" section and I've been severely lacking in that department. I promise to get that up and running again next week with some cool new tunes. There has been so much new music since we've last talked, so get ready to be bombarded with jams.

Don't forget to follow me on all social media if you're interested in the nonsense I spew on a daily basis. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram: @rikosmodernlife

And Snapchat: @rikoko4

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this and promise there is more to come!

Until next time,

R

~ Happy #20GAYTEEN ~