On The Road. A Pre-BBC&W15 Reflection.

By the time you read this, I will be gone.

My car is packed up, my cooler is full, the wife is asleep in the back seat, and I am driving down to North Carolina to participate in the 2015 Beer Bloggers (and Writers) conference. 

It's a weird thing for me. To start with, I'm only 3 years old in blogger years, and I'm surprised I managed to last this paltry amount of time. But I also find myself becoming more and more detached from the beer scene, and the writers that come along with it.

When I first started I was rabid, I was ready to jump head first into everything, to spread myself thin, and to cheerlead my ass off. Now? Not so much. I've pulled back. Far more reserved in my writing. It's become a landscape of fluff pieces on a topic that is a couple years too late, people still debating cans versus bottles, people still refusing to acknowledge that beer is a business, and a still constant barrage of adjectives as people continue to review beers.

That last one, thankfully, is being discussed this year by some good friends of mine during the Saturday sessions.

So where do I fit in? No idea.

When I left Boston in 2013, the biggest thing I took away was realizing what kind of blogger I didn't want to be. I pretty much stopped reviewing beers because I'm not adding anything to the conversation. Since then, yes my number of posts has fallen significantly, but I am far happier that I am creating content worth talking about. A lot of this stems from friendships I have formed with other bloggers who are beyond beer reviews, and have influenced me greatly (Oliver from "Literature and Libation," and Bryan from "This Is Why I'm Drunk") and helped shape a new generation of writing from me. With that I was able to form an amalgamation of humor, and the willingness to tackle topics like sexism, why some people are ruining beer for newbies, why I hate beer blogging, and why I love beer blogging.  There is also plenty of dumb available, too. 

Am I a good writer? Probably not. Although I know I'm a better writer than I was.

Am I important to beer? Nope, I'm just another dude with a computer writing about things that don't matter in the long run.

Why am I going? To be with friends. To hopefully learn something new. Maybe reinvigorate my passion for writing and learning about beer

Will there be cupcakes?

I hope so.

Photo Courtesy of "Two Girls One Beer"

You can read more about my BBC13 experience in Boston here.