I completed a task I set out for myself: last November, I asked if I could complete 360 writeups in a year. I actually completed that about a week ago. Right now, after being away for a while, I recompleted the task. This write-up will be #361. I was thinking of going to 365. I was also thinking of getting to 3000 writeups---and here, I am at 2999. But 2999 is a prime number, so as well I can stop here. I am pretty tired of writing for now. Some of my recent writeups have been short, but the research I did for them has changed how I viewed the world. Willamette Valley Project might seem cursory, but it encouraged me to go and view the dams. By researching and writing, I have learned a lot about lots of things and have grown. But now, for the foreseeable future, I am going to be doing other things.

I want whoever is reading this to consider two things, no matter what you think of me. Not everyone here likes me, and those who don't probably have good reasons for not doing so. But please consider these things:

E2 has been fading for years. Over a decade! And the key number for that isn't in the number of write-ups, which have gone down as write-ups have become longer. The key thing to consider is the active users. For the past five years, the number has usually been around 20-30 active users with a writeup a month. The highest number in the last five years was a month with 54 active user. So here we have a site that could be about everythingth--- where everyone who wants to in the world with an internet connection and a passing grasp of the English language could share whatever little things interested or obsessed them. There are tons of books, movies, activities, places, foods...all that someone, somewhere might want to write about. And yet, the site has dwindled away to the point where around two dozen people in the world want to use it. When was the last time a new user on e2 reached even 10 new writeups? Maybe we haven't even had that in the past five years. Okay, you know all of that already. But here is what I realized: this fading away of e2 has been due to a deliberate choice of the userbase, and especially of the administrators. E2 becoming a niche blogging site where about twenty people in the world share their personal thoughts is something that has been done by design. And I am not saying that to insult any of your writings, because I like most people on here, and I also think that some of that writing is quite good. But the problem is that while a long time user of this site can post some blank verse poetry and be lauded for their gripping emotional revelation, a new user is going to be scorned for the same thing. Because this site doesn't want new users. And it doesn't want a lot of old users, either. This site is doing exactly what the people in charge of it want it to be: a chatroom for a few friends. Okay then.

The second thing to consider, and related to the first: somehow, over the years, E2 came to the conclusion that every writeup has to be an epiphany, that the only things worth writing about are the most deep and personal ones, and that it isn't necessary, and even a bit silly, to write about any book or movie unless it changed your life. Some of my recent writeups seem to be silly---a few paragraphs or even a few sentences to connect something I thought was interesting with something else. And some of these writeups, which I agree might be minor, might get in the way of people's thoughts about their important personal experiences. That is why, from April to August, I kept all my writeups hidden. This has been going on for a while: a few months ago, I made a writeup of The Simpsons Movie, which while released close to 15 years ago, had nothing written on it here. The Simpsons Movie didn't change my life, it wasn't a poetic epiphany as it reconstructed my personal narrative for me, but it was something I at least had a reaction to. There is no reason why things like this---things in wide cultural currency, that probably have some bearing on the experiences of the viewer, can't be written about. Except for, as mentioned, there is an unwritten rule on E2 that if you aren't summiting a personal Everest of self-knowledge, there is no reason to write on here. Some of my short writeups, while seemingly minor, are introductions to topics that are of importance. A Little Golden Book: Star Wars: We Are The Resistance is not about a single book I read, but is a small piece of a puzzling topic: how honest are large corporations, like Disney, when they repurpose inclusive or progressive social views for the purpose of forming a brand identity with consumers? The answer to that is literally a dozen doctoral thesis, so rather than trying to research the topic exhaustively, I wrote about the one piece of the puzzle available to me. Maybe that is silly. Okay then.

I don't really have a reason to be here. I don't think my writeups are what this site wants right now, because as mentioned, it is a site for about 20 people to blog, and I am not one of them. I completed my task, I am proud of it, I hope someone gains some interest from what I have written. There are other outlets for where I can express myself: my YouTube channel is getting close to 2500 views a month now, meaning I have a way to communicate with a wider amount of people than I do on here. This site has chosen to dwindle away, and it makes no sense for me to spend energy here. So I am leaving for the foreseeable future, and I apologize for all the typos I won't be able to correct.