It's been three years since I started this website.
Three years ago, I launched Land Of The Nerds after months of preparation and thought as a way to segue from being my High School newspaper's film critic into being a full-on pop culture journalist. My entire life I had been captivated and inspired by websites like Comingsoon.net, Roger Ebert's own website The AV Club and The Dissolve that provided plenty of film news and in the latter three websites cases, also provided commentary and reviews that attended to a wide spectrum of types of movies. Blockbusters, obscure documentaries and direct-to-video comedy sequels all got equal levels of analysis. The world of cinema was vast and unpredictable and these websites were populated by people just dying to explore that world and all its nooks and crannies.
My job in starting Land Of The Nerds was to create something that could take that level of dedication and writing quality and add my own dash of personality to the mix. Since May 24, 2014 when Land Of The Nerds first opened, I've published 1,496 pieces of writing, most of which were movies reviews but there were plenty of editorials and news pieces to spice things up too. In recent weeks, I've been expanding the type of writing done on here too; music reviews, a prominent fixture in the early months of this website (where namely reviews of country music singles), have returned with a vengeance with a new weekly feature entitled Douglas Laman Needs A Tune-Up where I review a classic album I've never heard of before.
A new weekly editorial feature, In Laman's Terms, has also been an attempt by myself to revive a feature that was more prominent in the early days of the site. Why do I bring these two columns up specifically? To show how Land Of The Nerds is growing now and will continue to grow for as long as it exists. I love routines and proven schedules but I am not a stagnant person when it comes to my writing. I am always looking for new film genres and new avenues of pop culture to explore and write about and these two new weekly fixtures I hope serve as an indication of the wide spectrum of content Land Of the Nerds provides from yours truly.
Where do we go from here? Who really knows. Weekly fixtures and movie reviews will continue unabated (though my summer college courses will heavily restrict movie reviews to primarily new releases versus the heavy emphasis on reviews of pre-2017 feature films I've been doing for the first five months of this year) while I hope to one day make good use of the plural use of the word "Nerds" in this site's title and hire additional writers to provide their own unique perspectives to the table when it comes to pop culture. I would have once thought that was impossible, but I also would have thought it was impossible for this website to garner over 25,000 pageviews in a single month and since that's happened in two separate months in 2017, perhaps that goal of adding writers to this website will happen one of these o'l days!
I really don't want to sound like a bragger or anything like that, but I do work hard here, I take pride in my work and always wanting to improve it and looking back on the three years of steady pieces of writing I've provided on a daily basis does make me proud. Though it's a geeky pile of work I've created over the last few years, it's MY geeky pile of work and I'm happy to have my name and face on this website. But I'm even happier that I can share these works with you dear reader. Whether you've been reading this site for all three years of its existence or you just stumbled upon Land Of The Nerds by accident, I thank you for sticking around and listening to my extended ramblings about all sorts of pop culture fixtures. Your interest in diving deeper into the world of cinema makes my heart soar and you're the reason the site has kept going for as long as it has.
In summation, thank you to everyone for reading what I've made here for three years, I'm really proud of what's transpired so far in the Land Of The Nerds and I'm incredibly excited for what's to come. I don't know what's in the future, which is both a scary and exciting experience. But that's also how I felt when I was a High School Senior in the last week of High School, and now three years later, look what's happened. I just finished my third year of college and have done three straight years of working on this website. Not everything's been good that's occurred in the last three years for sure (just look at American politics) but we've also had amazing events too like the legalization of gay marriage, plenty of moments I'll never forget shared with my friends and family and I also have seen too many amazning movies to count.
The future is, quite frequently, a terrifying thing But as long as I've got this site, writing, you fine readers and some good movies by my side, I think I can handle anything life throws my way. Here's to the next three years and beyond of Land Of The Nerds!
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