If you’re reading this, obviously you’ve noticed the deletion of my blog. Before I start, I guess I’d like to apologise to anyone who continued to read it after such a long period of inactivity. Honestly I didn’t believe anyone remembered this little venture any more, it’d practically slipped my own mind, but now post-deletion I’ve been made aware of at least a small collection of people who did remember, and who now are left searching for answers. To those people I suppose all I can say is thank you, thank you and I’m sorry, thank you, I’m sorry, and let me explain. 

Primarily, the reason for the deletion was self-image. I don’t know how that’ll sound to anyone reading this, but I know to me it sounds weak. Perhaps a version of myself a year or so younger would’ve kept the blog alive out of principle, but I’m not the man, or even the boy, that I was roughly a year ago. Ultimately what it came down to, what it all comes down to, is a conflict of interest between the man I was, and the man I am. Let me explain.

Some people are lucky, or perhaps unlucky, enough to remain roughly the same person their whole lives. They move through life adding small details to themselves, however ultimately remaining staunchly consistent in their looks, beliefs, and mannerisms. You’ve seen thousands of these people already, I’m sure they don’t require further explanation, and please keep in mind that I’m not making any judgements of worth. For better or for worse, I am not one of those people. 

Being rich, white, and normal, I spent the earliest part of my childhood as one of the most popular children in primary school, before plummeting to the very bottom of the social order, existing for many years as pariah. There was a time when I honestly wore fedoras in an attempt to ‘dress sharp’, there was a time when I existed as a staunch conservative and believed myself a genius for asserting that homeless people should go “get a job” or that global warming was a “hippie hoax”, there was a time when I grovelled as the tragic ‘nice guy’ best friend of beautiful young girls and wallowed in the misery of unrequited love, there was a time when TJ Kirk was my messiah and I believed that vitriolic internet arguing made me a tyrant of ideology and debate.

And after all that fucking huff and blow I’ve just made about personal identity, all I’m really trying to say is this; I’m not the man I was when Kelleblog was a big deal, and I didn’t want to be associated with him any longer. With that said, deletion wasn’t my first option; I tried to set it to private without success, considered changing the url but knew people would find it. Because, even as so many of the things I’ve said and done on here are a black smear against my name, they are intercut with memories and milestones of personal development. 

Kelleblog was where I discovered I could write, here was where for the first time I realised I had an audience of people both on and offline who were, at least, interested in what I had to say, here was where so much of my ideology even to this day was shaped and solidified; Kelleblog represented my first attempt at high-quality expression, and for that reason, the decision to resort to deletion was long and hard. I’d put so much passion, so much hard work into what I’d made here, and there I was, just, throwing it all away.

So again, thank you to anyone who read, and anyone who kept reading. To a person living in isolation, the knowledge of being heard, of being on someone’s mind, of simply being a part of the world and interacting with it; has an enormous impact.