Steve's reason for this blog (not?) existing.

There are a few major reasons why I’m fairly certain the blog format is not best suited for me. As far as I’ve been able to determine at this point, when you’re writing a blog that’s not for profit (or for some larger purpose of a group), you’re writing mainly for yourself. This essentially means that you’re creating your own deadlines (as there is no one else to provide them for you) and keeping yourself motivated to write about whatever you find interesting. This presents an obvious problem for anyone who’s known me for longer than five minutes; I am terrible at keeping myself under those kinds of constraints. I am very good at motivating other people and keeping them focused (or at the very least keeping them in a positive mindset), but I am not the best person to keep myself motivated. I imagine this because I have a hard time being practical about blogs as there’s no tangible reward at the end of finishing each blog post or a group of blog posts.

Usually the people who write blogs about their own life either lead very interesting, off kilter lives or are self centered enough to think that their lives are interesting enough to read about (or possibly both). I don’t particularly like talking about myself. Every time I sit down and write something, it’s a bit of a struggle because I’ll ask every few minutes why anyone would find what I’m writing about interesting because ultimately I don’t think I lead a very interesting life and while I think I have some interesting thoughts, I don’t necessarily think they have enough substance to them to really take up much space. This is why my last attempt at a blog failed (plus I did end up hating the title).

The other reason the last blog failed was because I’m stubborn. What I wanted to do with the last post there was to cover the most recent volume of Scott Pilgrim, but I ran into some snags along the way. The biggest one being that I wasn’t quite sure how to approach Scott Pilgrim but I was determined that the next post was going to be about Scott Pilgrim.

The reason I hit a snag is because I was having a hard time relating the idea that Scott Pilgrim is a zeitgeist for the post Generation X generation. A generation up until this point doesn’t really have much in the way of a definitive story told about the generation by someone among the generation, but I feel once completed Scott Pilgrim will be it (although I don’t expect anyone to actually agree with me, which is always part of the problem with this whole endeavor). The hang up basically arose when I tried to define the generation as I felt that it was crucial to do this to explain why Scott Pilgrim was important. This primarily impossible because as the generations go on and as they get more coverage, more contradictions arise about each and every generation. They used to be defined in generalities because no one really knew better and there wasn’t enough information out there to stray from those generalities (there also weren’t enough tangible choices in life for the majority of people to really make a difference). But as more information was presented and offered, it really became harder to define generations (although the need to define generations increased, go figure), so instead we get a bunch of vague definitions that don’t really make any sense to anyone who is remotely paying attention.

This brings us back to Scott Pilgrim. In the end it doesn’t really focus on any of those vague definitions but instead focuses on the lives of a middle 20s group living in a major city. Ignoring the difference in eras, this is something that doesn’t really change and despite differences on the surface, the overarching story encasing Scott Pilgrim is a timeless one. Which is ultimately why I feel it’s important to this generation, as it’s the first story being told that I’ve connected with in this (of course since reading Scott Pilgrim, (500) Days of Summer was released which also fills this void for me) and I really want to impress upon people that they should be reading this.

Of course there’s an ulterior motive to getting people to read (or at least be aware of it). Sometime next year (2010), a film based off the six volume comic is going to be released called Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (named after the second volume). The film as a solid chance of being excellent as the director (Edgar Wright) and lead actor (Michael Cera) are both very good, as is the rest of the cast (or at least the ones who aren’t complete unknowns). I would like people to at least be aware of Scott Pilgrim ahead of time because (and this is rather selfish) it would be nice not have people ask me whether or not I was aware Scott Pilgrim was a comic by people who really ought to know me better. But as with everything, I don’t expect anyone to actually listen to me.