Thursday, June 27, 2013

A Mediocre Pleasantry

A Rather Pleasant Site has come a long way since its inception. We've gone from a heavy focus on content generation to a more lax attitude that focuses more on promotion and marketing. We're far from the professionalism of well known web sites focused on music/lit/game promotion, but still trying to achieve something apart from the typical coalition of writers or a single writer blogging away at a whim.

It's not hard to notice a discrepancy in our goals, mission statement, and actual accomplishments. We aim to be something that simply hasn't been fully conceptualized yet, much less actualized. We claim to focus on independent music, games, and literature, yet our focus is spread unevenly throughout and our interpretation of the word independent can be somewhat hazy at times. Our actual accomplishments seem to amount to little more than odd musings, somewhat intriguing ideas, and disorganized rants in the areas of literature, games, and music respectively. Although I have often wondered at the practical direction of aRPS, it's easy to see it fall apart right here, right now.

I have no intention of abandoning A Rather Pleasant Site. However, I can't afford to delude myself into having priorities that I do not actually have. Ever since I took over from Reogan, I've been trying to formalize who and what we are with a bigger emphasis on logistics. I realize now that this has its benefits, but is not entirely within the spirit of A Rather Pleasant Site as stated within its very title. Our imaginations are filled with thoughts that entertain us and engage us. The way we perceive music, games, and literature is a product of who we are. We like to share this with you because it is amusing--it is pleasant. Unfortunately, limited resources, time, and priorities have left us without many pleasant thoughts to share. The self-induced complexities of day to day life overwhelm our desire to unpredictably pioneer our imaginations in a way that is capable of being conveyed to a reader.

Where do we go from here? This is the question that I'm always left asking. I honestly don't know. I'm still set on moving off the blogger format and into something where content generation is no longer the biggest concern. I want to organize our thoughts so that they are best conveyed to you. We've made commitments. We're not going anywhere. Unfortunately, we've taken that too literally. Let's be pleasantly engaging. It's time to start taking our mediocrity seriously.

We're moving at the speed of a snail right now, but stick around and in a year or two we might actually be in a slightly different place. No matter how long it takes, we'll get the job done. Stay pleasant. Thanks for reading.