PAWeekendFun
My first blog, www.paweekendfun.com, is a little wonky, a little all over the place, and a little more sycophantic than I’d like, but there are still pieces I occasionally revisit and think, “Ok, Brothwell, you did something there.” More importantly, it made me write consistently, always think of stories from angles that weren’t necessarily covered before, and keep a schedule (that I, admittedly, very inconsistently stuck with).
It also gave me space to experiment, swing and miss, and is a living timeline of my evolution as a writer and thinker, so I continue paying for its domain.
AshevilleExplorer
My first adult writing aspiration was to be a “travel blogger.” I’m still somewhat embarrassed by the iteration I wanted to be, but I also think PAWeekendFun is an accurate portrayal of a privileged, middle-class 20-something circa 2010.
While I no longer had travel blogger/influencer aspirations (believe it or not, influencer wasn’t a word we used in 2010, but it’s definitely what I was trying to obtain) when I moved to Asheville, I’m still someone who loves exploring my locale and documenting my thoughts, hence the name and direction of this current blog.
But, just as my writing style has evolved from 23 to 33, so has my point of view, so social, anthropological, and political commentary is just as prevalent, if not more prevalent, than dining, hiking, and day trip recommendations, than in my previous project. It also gets—and I’m using a term I hate, but that works—somewhat meta (sometimes satirically, sometimes self-effacingly, and sometimes just commentary-wise) on the machinations behind the travel/lifestyle writing/influencing behemoth that probably doesn’t get enough credit for influencing the way we travel, work, live, consume, and discard.
When I first shared it with him, I was happy to hear my brother say that this blog had a much stronger POV than PAWeekendFun, and in another improvement, I’ve been almost consistently posting every Monday for the past two years,
Like its predecessor, AshevilleExplorer is a place for me to write for myself without outside influence and somewhere to consistently self-audit and reflect on how I live and write.