I am wrapping up Taming the Polar Bears.
This week the blog passed 175,000 page views. It has gained a certain amount of respect by readers of all kinds from regular folks to professional organizations, health care professionals, academics and so on.
I would like to say I'm proud of this but I'm not.
I did not set out on this journey of what would become this blog at the dawn of 2013 to be "popular". I set out to really change lives, to work with people to change their lives. I set out to create something that took a compassionate and compassionately scientific view of human behaviours of all kinds and how people's lives can end up in debilitating mental health disorders, addiction of all kinds or even criminal behaviour.
But after five years, one gets tired of pushing boulders uphill.
I wanted to create a model of hope based on the very best science I could find and write about it in ways that could relate and be understood by almost anyone.
I wanted to create a model of self recovery that did not rely on substances of any kind.
I wanted to prove it could be done.
But what close to five years of pushing what I felt was the best objective science for understanding human behaviour and mental health disorders in a compassionate way has taught me is that very few people are actually interested in science and facts.
Even fewer people are interested in taking ownership for themselves and following a long term plan for better mental health and living.
Beliefs will trump science and facts every time. People prefer unfounded speculation to truth.
Magic short term quick fixes will trump the longer harder road every time.
Page views, readers*, kind comments and the like are nice but that's not what I set out to do.
Five+ years of trying to be an advocate for understanding human struggle compassionately and through the best scientific lens I could manage takes its toll.
I may write more on this in the coming days but as of now I will not be writing or publishing anymore material.
There are too many people to thank who helped contribute to this blog over the nearly six years since I first conceived of all the basic framework but please know and accept how deeply grateful I am to each and every one of you.
- BGE, October 26, 2018
I fully understand, Brad, why you need to step back from Taming the Polar Bears, but I am sorry to see it end. I wish you satisfaction and fulfillment in whatever comes next for you and, as always, happiness and good health.
ReplyDeleteI hope you are not going to take down the pages permanently. Please leave them in an archive repository. https://archive.org/ You may not think the pages made much of an impact. You might be surprised what people take from it. It provides us with a human lens. There is a fine line between speculation and truths especially when you take into account perception. I hope your next endeavor will bring you greater fulfillment.
ReplyDeleteMaricel, I agree and hope it stays up as well. Just because it's not apparent, sometimes those slow journey's rather that quick fixes, do come Brad, and you may have made more of a difference than you know. Your work and dedicate might still have much life left in it, even if you never add another sentence. What is well written, and what is well documented, has a way of enduring through all the fades. Like a classic book, or a classic look, your journey teaches a strong steady course, so I hope you'll do the same and let things remain, even after Google plus has shifted us all away.
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