The Wide World of Dirt

Hello folks, I am back. Again. For like the fourth or fifth time.

Another year went by, and I left this place high and dry around July. That wasn’t because I don’t want to publish or anything like that.

I moved in July of last year across the country. No longer am I typing to you from the desert but instead the tundra of the northern Midwest.

This morning I woke to seeing more snow on the road than I’d ever seen in my life up to this point, and it’s only January 13th. Everything is fine!

I didn’t completely stop writing, but I did it for another outlet under my legal name. If you’re here because you like my writings about modern and historical NASCAR, I’d recommend heading over to Pit Box Press. We’re doing cool stuff over there.

Over the past few months, I’ve thought about how I’m going to continue to run this site and what content I want to put out.

I feel as if I’ve gotten too zeroed in on long-form content like The Junior Johnson Saga and the Casey Atwood piece.

While rewarding, the creations of that scale require a lot of time, effort, energy, and even more research, something I don’t always have time for.

So, I’m going to be tackling things in pieces or in shorter bites. I have a review coming up for one of my favorite episodes of Daria that’s on the shorter size.

Writing that article felt good. I felt like I say what I needed to say, but I don’t go on too many tangents that might distract from the main point.

I intend to bring fruit reviews back soon as well as the Dew Review. I’m also going to be getting into the world of listicles because I like lists, and as long as your writing isn’t bland, the format won’t matter.

My friend Kam and I have collaborated on many projects in the past, dating back to the Pause Before Applause podcast through to zone-coverage.com and most recently to The Show Show podcast.

After a little while last year, Kam and I decided to put The Show Show on an indefinite hiatus, but we’re not done cooking.

In fact, Kam is the newest citizen of the Wide World of Dirt with his debut article on the site due to come out this Wednesday, and hopefully, we’ll see him pop by from time to time.

I know I want to write more, but I’m tired of trying to get this place to earn money. I set a goal for myself last year that I’d get this site to generate some income, which did not get met at all.

Even extending to a podcast on Spotify didn’t bring in the big bucks like I’d hoped, but it reminded me of why doing recordings without an outline or script is just not in the cards for me.

I need to organize my thoughts; they don’t make much sense otherwise.

One of my most ambitious categories of new content will focus on fiction writing. I earned a bachelor’s in English – Creative Writing in college, and for a number of reasons, I haven’t written much since I graduated.

Having this outlet encourages me to write more fiction/creative work, especially now that I’m going to publish those works here.

I don’t want to leave this world when I’m old with filled notebooks and 1000 notes on my phone that no one got to see.

The only way I can keep getting better as a writer is to keep doing it and doing it somewhat regularly, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.

This place may also be in need of a rebrand this year. I’ve gone by Dirt for the better part of the last five years, but I’ve grown detached from the pseudonym.

When the time comes for that, you’ll know, and it won’t just be because you’ll open the site one day only to find it named something completely different.

At the end of the day, I want to look back on this year positively, and writing is a lot of fun for me. So, that’s what 2024 is going to be about on the Wide World of Dirt.

We’re going to have a whole lot of fun.

I’m leaving most of the over-the-top negativity in the past and trying to have a new, more positive direction for my content.

That’s not to say you won’t see something like “Zach Wilson stinks” because many new chapters have been written in that saga that I can’t wait to present to you all.

So, no more moping. No more coping. Only fun, y’all.