Hello Again

Over three years ago, I won my first air guitar competition in Philadelphia. It had more of an impact on my life than I ever would have expected, introducing me to a bizarre and joyful underworld of free spirits who forced me to reevaluate what it means to experience music.

A few months later, and not entirely coincidentally, I accepted a job offer in Boston at what might be described as competitive air guitar’s above-ground equivalent: Harmonix, the world’s premier developer of music games. It was a new industry in a new city with new faces, and it was a year and a half well spent, but it ultimately wasn’t for me.

Seeing the potential in what would soon come to be known as Studiomates, I decided to give self-employment in Brooklyn a try. The last fourteen months have been spent assimilating myself into yet another set of unfamiliar faces and surroundings, getting reacquainted with client services, and slowly learning how to run a tiny business.

Among everything else these last three years, I’ve sustained a distance relationship, begun learning how to make music, and grieved the loss of my father. My world has grown and changed a lot. But two things remain the same:

1. I don’t know quite what I want to be when I grow up. When I tell people I’m freelancing, they often ask what sorts of clients and projects I want to attract, what I want to make. I don’t have an answer. I don’t have a goal.
2. I’m not writing.

These phenomena are not mutually exclusive. Jeffrey Zeldman connects the dots: “Writing is fun. Writing is fundamental. If you don’t write, you don’t know what you think.” I’m not sure this is true for everyone, but it’s definitely true for me. And for pretty much as long as I’ve been able to read and write, it has been my most reliable tool for externalizing and arranging ideas that are too complex for my brain to manage in the abstract.

Robweychert.com has been my main writing outlet for nearly ten years. Its activity level has fluctuated over that time, but it has never been so quiet as it has in the three years since I moved to Boston, a time when I probably needed it more than ever.

Today, I’m finally bringing the site back to life, and while this relaunch is long overdue, it is by no means unwelcome. There are still holes to fill (home page, portfolio), bugs to squash (hello, Internet Explorer!), and design tweaks to make, but more importantly, my writing has a home again. I hope you enjoy it.