An Aside - January 10th, 11:00 AM

In the endgame for the initial note reviewing and further researching on Project Blue, which leads me to the land of a forum that was mostly active in 2006.

It feels so clean and so wholesome, and so incredibly young and right in everything it is. Reminds me so much of the Happy Cube forum from The Wyoming Incident, this area of people getting together for the discussion of things that are fresh and exciting and a grand adventure full of secrets and discoveries, all revolving around one of the most unique achievements in art and storytelling of the 21st century.

It brings me back, makes me think of that time. Makes me think of 2008, with the initial Cloverfield ARG. That scene was just so damn exciting all the time, everything it was, this big web of new kinds of websites and communities to go through.

Even this one forum reflecting a non-internet piece feels so close to home like that.

And I think, therein, I see a flash of something that makes a whole lot clearer to me.

I think a loss of so much of that is what led me to be so jaded and listless over the last year with what was on the scene and what I hadn't picked up and played with yet for a video. I never felt the call to explore in the ways this and The Wyoming Incident made me do it.

I had gone through my catalog, that was it. The only fond memory or similar piece I could remember from that realm, the Cloverfield ARG, was already covered by Inside A Mind. It felt like a maze in a puzzle book I loved solving as a kid, and suddenly, I open a fresh copy to find someone already did it, scratching into the paper with a blue pen, leaving all the little excess lines and crooked turns along the path.

"It's been explored. It's done. Not even Jupiter can find a lost opportunity, and this one's gone."

Well, shit...

And from there, nothing cropped up. Adventures like the most captivating pieces ran dry, and anything that still looked like them which showed up in my suggestion box or memory led to cereal box prizes as the heart of the journey. I had been used to running through catacombs to find fountains of enchanted water, and it suddenly turned to running through highschool halls following maps that led to... water fountains.

You know what, though? It's my own fault for thinking that was all there was at the end.

I got depressed, I stayed disappointed, I became jaded, I turned cynical. I let that happen to me and didn't look for anything new--(or the wonderful, fresh old)--and I didn't challenge or fight it, because the appearance of so much extra coverage all around just created more of a sense that all lands worth finding were being discovered, all lost cities and their riches unearthed. 

But that's not true. That was the narrow way of thinking, the shallow way of thinking, the defeatist attitude.

This world, full of art and artists, thinkers and creators, geniuses and plotters, has more wonder to offer than there are webseries and ARGs put together. 

Just because you don't know where to find more mountains to climb doesn't mean there aren't beautiful uncharted jungles or deep, luminous caverns.

I feel re-awoken, and more importantly, I feel silly. I was silly. I was silly on a lot of things, and I've found my explorer's spark again. A depressed adventurer claims there are no more adventures, but then, you just remind them the world is bigger than one land mass.

There is much more out there with heart, soul, and genius design. Sometimes it comes out fresh and new, a modern birth, catching us all by surprise. But there are still buried treasures and incredible tombs to open and explore.

Sometimes, you've just gotta stop deciding you're right in being sad and pull your head out of your ass. And the fresh air feels good.