She’s Dead, Jim
I’m wrapping up 2011 by taking action to reduce the amount of stress and responsibility I have in 2012. It saddens me to say this, but I feel that my innergeek blog has run its course and it’s time to officially stop posting. I hit a rut last May when my beloved kitty died and, as fecal matter continued to hit the fan in various areas of my life, I never recovered my blogging mojo. I think now is an appropriate time for sadface. 
Don’t worry – the Geek Test will remain online. And I don’t plan to delete my blog archive. In fact, one of my goals in saying goodbye to this blog is to re-focus my energy on the Geek Test. It’s been almost two years since the last update. Geeks are more mainstream than they have ever been before, which is both exciting and disconcerting. I think that the more mainstream it is to be a geek, the more it takes away from what it really means to be a geek.
And this geek flood into mainstream culture has oddly made me feel like far less of a geek than I did just five years ago. I also wonder how much of that comes with getting older—there was something almost magical about coming into my geekdom in my 20s that just didn’t hold up after I turned the corner into my fourth decade (commence age-related whimpering). Then again, that sputtering magic time coincides with the aforementioned Crappy Life Issues so it’s hard to pinpoint the cause or effect.
It still delights me that the Geek Test itself is relevant to people out there. There’s a lot that I could have done with innergeek.us in the past that is no longer relevant. I feel that there are already lot of sites that aggregate geeky content from all over the internet and plenty of places for social networking with friends and strangers and strangers-who-will-become-friends that negate the need for a good old-fashioned innergeek message board. Recognizing this is an important step in making my site relevant in the future. How will I make it relevant? Well, I have some ideas from a few years back that are still viable, so I’m going to start with those. Rather than over-promise and under-deliver, though, I’d prefer to just surprise you.
I’m still on Twitter (@innergeek) but have been more consistently updating my Facebook page (facebook.com/geektest), which is 4,591 fans strong as of today. Please connect with me on one or both of those networks if you’d like to participate in the evolution of the Geek Test or be notified when there’s an update.
Despite a less-than-ideal 2011, I’ve made a lot of positive strides this past year. I have some new projects and challenges underway (both personal and professional) that I really want to succeed, and I’m hoping that will drive me to see them through. I’ve been hanging on to a little slip of paper from a fortune cookie since summer that has done much more for my attitude than one of those irritating motivational posters ever has. It’s a reminder, in small print, to learn from my mistakes and keep trying.
Failure is the chance to do better next time.
