I started this Kin Lane blog back in 2007. For many years it saw one or two posts every couple months about whatever I was seeing online. Then somewhere around 2012 I began waking up more to not just the world around me, but to who I was, who I had been, and I began doing a lot of thinking about who I wanted to be. The Kin Lane blog became my therapist. It was where I would post something that I needed to get off of my shoulders. The domain was a safe place for me to put my thoughts out there in way that would validate the way I was feeling while simultaneously setting them free. Here, in May of 2021, after almost fifteen years of posting here, I would say that I have reached a milestone in my personal development, achieving a peace of mind where I don’t feel like I need to process much more from the past. Sure, I am guessing there will be the occasional topic that emerges from the woodworks, but for the most part I am beyond processing the craziness from my past and I am looking towards the future. With this in mind I am going to reboot Kin Lane, flush the 14 years of blog posts, and begin with a blank canvas. I will keep everything I have written, but will be rebooting this blog with an eye towards what is next and not about what has been.
My writing has saved me. I cannot overstate this enough. This blog has allowed me to peel back the layers of who Kin Lane is and get to the root of so many issues that troubled me. I was able to successfully unwind my past, and to continue the healing process, I feel like it is important to hit reset on my narrative, letting go of what I have found and put all my energy into manifesting the future I want to see. I have achieved everything I had envisioned for myself, and I have wrestled (and won) every demon that dogged me for the first half of my life. I have a beautiful wife, daughter in University, loving and well-behaved dog, successful career, and have found balance (mostly) in operating Kin Lane each day. I have detached numerous “cords” from my past and have the remaining chaotic wire mess of these cords stored here in the kinlane.com domain. There is no reason to keep them on display anymore. I have numerous stalkers and detractors these days, something that will only grow as I evolve in my career—-no reason to give them free ammunition. I am proud of everything I have written, and I have found a lot of value in sharing them publicly, but for me to continue in my healing and evolution I think it is time to organize them, print and bind them, and just put them on a corner of the bookshelf that I visit once a decade or so. All the stories I have told here still matter, but for me to write the next chapter I need to properly move on from everything I’ve unpacked.
What a ride. What a learning experience. What an awakening. I discovered so much about me and how I have viewed the world for most of my life. I developed an entirely new set of lenses to look at the world around me, so I really don’t need this old set of lenses in which I used before–they have some scratches in the lens. Moving forward I will still have the same honesty and tone in my storytelling here on the blog, it just won’t be nearly as dark as my writing up until now. I don’t have so many fearful people yanking my chain anymore. I am not wrapped up in societal collapse and the world ending anymore. I don’t have to defend my daughter and wife from the dark forces of the world I grew up in anymore. I don’t have to convince myself that I am worthwhile and able to be successful. Most of all, I don’t have to save the world, I just have to make it a better place in any way I possibly can. I am not afraid anymore. The world isn’t out to get me. I like this state of mind. It makes the world a much friendlier place, even with all of its problems. With Kin Lane (mostly) figured out I can begin to focus more on the world around me, and some of the worlds I’d like to see exist through my fictional storytelling. Of course, the storytelling will continue to have that Kin Lane voice. I can’t help that. I was successful in crafting my API Evangelist voice, while also finding my own Kin Lane voice, so who knows what I will be able to carve out now that I have a blank canvas.
Our history is such a powerful thing. How we should learn about it, remember it, learn from it, but also understand when to leave it behind. Where is that fine line between, “Ok I have learned so much from writing and thinking about the first 40+ years of my life”, and “thinking about all of this much more begins to give it new power in controlling me and preventing me from moving on”. I think I found that place. I have some new stories to tell and to be able to tell them properly I need to reboot this domain and give myself the opportunity for renewal and reaching entirely new heights. Heights that my previous self may not have been comfortable with, and the people I knew during this time would never allow. With that said, I just zipped up all the posts since 2007 and uploaded a copy to my time capsule and a separate copy in Dropbox. I will make some time to go through and clean house on the posts some weekend in the future, and then see about organizing the most meaningful posts into a self-published book that I can add to the bookshelf. It has been fun. If you have tuned into all of this I would like to thank you for putting up with me. If you are one of the numerous folks who have emailed me to express how you connected with one of my stories I would like to thank you for being out there. Telling stories here on Kin Lane has made the last decade bearable. Posting here has allowed me to maintain forward motion in my life and get through some very rough years, but it has also set the stage for what I am counting on being the most prolific and healthy storytelling period in my life.
