My name is Mitch Mitchell, and I live in Liverpool, NY. Come July of this year I’ll have lived in central New York for 40 years, though I’m a bit older than that. This is my home, and I can’t conceive of living anywhere else. I love this area more than any other area I’ve been to, and I’ve lived in and visited a lot of places. At this point in my life I can’t imagine living anywhere else, and I hope I’ve shown that in most of the articles I’ve written on this blog.

Me and cup
 

However, I feel the need for a bit more, as well as a mind shift change (seems “mindshift” isn’t a real word; too bad since I like using it). Let me explain a little bit.

As a military kid, you move a lot. You move onto a new airbase and you’re immediately welcomed by lots of other kids. If you’re not a jerk, you’ll have friends for as long as any of you are around, because people move all the time.

When that kind of life is over and you move to a place where people grew up with each other and have already established their friendships, it’s hard to break into. I went to Liverpool High School for two years. I met lots of people; you go to a school of over 3,800 kids and try not meeting anyone. Most of the people I could take or leave; not that any of them cared. When I graduated, almost all of my friends were people who had moved to the area around the time I did. Even almost 40 years later, those are the people I talk to most often from that period.

I went to college in Oswego; love Oswego with a passion. Many people complain about the weather; trust me, when you’ve lived in Limestone Maine for almost 5 years weather in Oswego means almost nothing; almost that is, since cold winds coming off a great lake are a different matter. Still, when all was said and done most of the friends I made from there lived in other places. I had a few friends, one whom I’d actually met in high school, Scott, who went to a different high school, and is still one of my best friends ever; go figure that one out.

For many years I worked in central New York and that was fine, but I can’t say that I made lots of new friends. I guess the pattern was already set for me from previous years. I don’t count people I work with as friends unless I do things with them, which is rare. I certainly can’t say I don’t have any good friends locally; that would be a lie. I treasure all of those folks, more than they might ever know.

When I decided to go into business for myself in 2001, I thought that I’d finally have the opportunity to know more people locally and make more friends via networking and such. I also thought I’d be working with more people locally, thus establishing a base locally would be the way to go.

You know what’s interesting? Almost no one locally cares all that much. This is one of four blogs I write. The other three blogs rarely have anyone locally that sees them, let alone comments on them. The same with this blog. For that matter, when I was writing a newsletter on leadership and a newsletter on health care (both for 10 years), and when I started marketing my first book… almost no one locally ever subscribed, or saw the stuff, or bought the book. I used to speak all over town and never got paid, whereas I’ve spoken in 8 other states and got paid for all of them.

Then there’s this blog. It’s initial intention was to highlight things and events in the area that maybe no one else had done. I’ve mainly done restaurant reviews, but I’ve talked about many other things also. I’ve even interviewed some local people doing great things. But other than the one post I wrote about something bad that happened to my friend Kelvin, which garnered lots of attention, almost nothing else has interested almost anyone (except for Phil; thanks Phil!)

I figure that it’s now 2015, and it’s a year where I have to make some massive changes in my entire life. One is going to be the focus of this blog, for two reasons.

IMAG2403
 

One, for almost 2 years I was traveling back and forth to Memphis, and I wrote few articles on this blog. Since it’s focus was Syracuse and central New York, and since I wanted to have pictures for the posts, and I was out of town and thus missing lots of stuff, I felt like I didn’t have anything to write about. Thus, it wasn’t visited much before, and it was visited less after that.

Now I’m home, though I have no idea how long, but I’ve realized that it doesn’t matter all that much. Sure, I’m still going to write about local stuff; I love my area after all, the good and the bad.

But it’s time to change things up a bit. So, instead of it just being a blog about local stuff, I’ve decided to make it my personal blog as well. It’s always risky when someone decides to change the focus of their blog, but in this case there’s no risk whatsoever. This blog’s ranking is tanking, few local people seem interested in reading about things in their area and even fewer are commenting on it. So there’s nothing to lose.

Years ago, before I started blogging, I used to write these stories about my trips and escapades and send them to people via email. Many people loved those stories back in the day. These days fewer people are reading their personal email, so I haven’t made the effort in writing those stories.

But I have escapades and adventures that I’d like to talk about, without having to put everything into a video that no one locally is ever going to watch anyway. For instance, I didn’t have a place where I could talk about going to Orlando for a wedding, and then going to Universal Studios to see the Harry Potter stuff; that was 8 hours of an adventure that I didn’t get to talk about anywhere.

I didn’t get to talk about going to San Diego and all the things that happened to me there. I didn’t get to talk about going to New Orleans and the things that happened to me there. The trip to Louisville and catching up with my friend Ted for the first time in ages, the trip to Tunica, Mississippi & the casinos, meeting Jerry Lawler at Target, and seeing Rick Flair in a different store, visiting the Memphis Botanical Gardens and Beale Street and my first gay parade. I didn’t talk about the new fangled Detroit airport and the chocolate store at the Chicago airport and my first ever foot massage at the airport in Philadelphia. I did write about the overnight I spent in the airport in Washington DC, complete with video.

There’s lots of stories and thoughts I have that I don’t really have another place to share them on. My I’m Just Sharing blog was initially for that purpose, but it’s got a more specific purpose overall and putting stories and thoughts there that are of a more general topic doesn’t always work.

Thus, that’s what Syracuse Wiki will be for, a combination of personal stories and thoughts I want to share and different items about central New York life that I want to share and… well, we’ll see after that.

Of course, if all goes as normal almost no one will see this anyway, so it’s got a chance to be an anonymous blog; I can live with that. 🙂
 

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