This is the last essay I intend to post to this site.

I've enjoyed writing many of these essays, but I feel like the time has come to end things, for several reasons.

I started this page in order to encourage myself to write a full-fledged essay every week, thus getting myself into the habit of writing in my own style again, which would theoretically lead to an outpouring of wonderful fiction and so forth.

However, my definition of a good essay is a tightly written piece of work on a definite topic, with a clear message and focus. As you go back and read these essays, many of them do not fit that definition. They are extended journal entries -- entertaining reading, certainly, but not well-written essays by my standards.

Second of all, I started this particular page as an "anonymous" place to say some personal things that I wouldn't want people who know me to read, such as my family. Unfortunately, I shared the URL with too many people I know in real life, but to whom I do not want to reveal certain aspects of my private side. I still didn't feel free to write some of the essays I wanted.

In addition, I'm not thrilled with free Web sites that force people to deal with pop-up menus, watermarks, and other advertising gimmicks. I've been reading more and more daily journal sites and getting increasingly annoyed with the ones on free Web sites. One site in particular keeps making my computer at work crash, which probably means that I shouldn't read stuff like that in the office, but that's irrelevant. I don't want to cause other people to have to reboot their machines because I'm too cheap to spring for my own server space.

I will keep the archives for this page here on Tripod for the moment, and I certainly invite all of you to have a good read. At some point, I will probably move various essays to other Web sites, depending on the topics, but keep them here too.

I'm not planning to vanish from the Web entirely. I am putting together a daily journal page, with briefer entries that are more anecdotal and less essayish. I feel that short entries are more appropriate for journal-style writing.

In addition, once I get my end-of-year bonus from my lovely new employer (I hope, anyway), I will arrange for server space and my own domain name. No, I don't know yet what the domain name will be -- not a lot of choices remain, you know. As I have currently planned it, that site will feature essays on specific topics, mostly film-related. I'd like to write a weekly (or so) essay focusing on a particular aspect of film/television/media. However, that site will probably not appear until late 1998 or early 1999.

Please email me if you would like the URL to one or both of these Web sites when they surface. The journal pages should appear within the next couple of weeks, depending on how much I procrastinate.

However, if you know me personally and see me on a regular basis, please do not take offense if I do not give you the URL to my journal pages. I am asking that you not read these pages, so that I can feel free to express myself openly. Eventually, I will put the journal pages on the other planned site, and I might feel more comfortable about your reading the journal pages. For the time being, I hope you will understand. I will be happy to give you the URL for the other planned site as soon as one is available.

I would like to thank everyone who has repeatedly visited this site and even sent me email. Hopefully, I will soon have more babble and rant for you to read.