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A Year Without Blogging

Tl;dr version:

Going on hiatus, BRB.

Long version:

I am pretty active when it comes to putting stuff online. Just a casual glance at my Twitter feed for the year reveals that, on average, I put up comics, blog posts, podcasts and other assorted oddities for public consumption at least several times a month1. Last year I managed to write 22 blog posts, some of which contained long-form media that takes a long time to create/edit (like videos); that’s almost two fairly large blogs a month! However, I’m still generally unsatisfied by what I’m working on in my spare time and I’ve come to the realisation that it’s really easy to be working on the wrong output.

I am my own worst enemy – I make unrealistic expectations on myself to finish things and then just can’t let go when I lose interest in them. For example, half the goals listed in the “goals list” from last year are unfinished, which bugs me. The second and third videos where we look at my old webcomics were an absolute chore to put together towards the end, but I couldn’t let it go. I’m still bugged by the fact that I haven’t finished the subtitling on my Discworld Noir videos2. I really want that platinum trophy on MGSV (and the one for Hitman 2, come to mention it. Oh, and I just got Fallout 4, Mad Max and GTA: Vice City for Christmas!). At the same time there are other projects I would like to work on and some I would like to actually make a start on!

Something has to give. That thing, I’ve decided, is the background need for me to output stuff once every few weeks; more specifically blogs which, although I enjoy writing them a lot, take up a lot of creative energy and don’t really output anything remarkable3.

I wrote once about leaving a digital footprint, specifically in the form of a DeviantArt account but it applies to all online presence. I just want to stick a flag in the ground where my digital footprint is with a sign on it that reads “BRB”4, in case anyone finds this website in half a year’s time and wonders why it hasn’t been updated. It hasn’t been updated out of choice, not due to laziness or the owner disappearing off the web into the ether of “real life”5.

I’m slap bang in the middle of moving house around the time this goes up. I now own6 an actual physical building to share with my fiancée, which is very exciting.

I need a year to work on stuff in private without the self-imposed deadline of “gotta post something up on the web, it’s been a week since the last thing!”. I’d like to come back in a year or so with a whole bunch of exciting, fresh things to talk about. If I get anything I desperately want to comment on that’s in the zeitgeist I may cave and stick up a one-off blog and I suspect any comic pages that get finished will continue to go up as they are completed. As for the rest…I’m going silent for a bit.

This isn’t goodbye, just au revoir. Catch you down the line. 😉

Fallout Walking into Sunset
Blimey, the way I’m making this out you’d think I’m going to war or something. It’s only a smegging website!

P.S. I’m still going to be active on Facebook, Twitter and social media so if you’re friends with me on certain channels I’ll still be around to talk and stuff. This is basically a post where I tell my personal website that I need a break7 (and that is a weird thing to catch yourself typing!).

  1. Last year was severely stymied by an unexpected move of location and the release of MGSV: The Phantom Pain. Most of the stuff linked on my Twitter over the past year has been comic pages drawn by my other half that I wrote over five years ago. ↩
  2. I’m probably going to leave these until 2019, which will be the 20 year anniversary of DWN. At least, I tell myself that. ↩
  3. I never did get the hang of the idea that blogs should be “short and sweet”. ↩
  4. That’s “Be Right Back” in case you’re not down with the kids and their slang, not “Bring Rare Booze” or “Bait Randy Bears”. ↩
  5. You’d be surprised how many friends I’ve had disappear into real life without a trace. Scary stuff! ↩
  6. Although technically I suppose it belongs to the mortgage lender until we’ve paid them back but I still qualify as a “homeowner” according to society at large, which I find slightly curious. ↩
  7. It’s alright, we have an open relationship – we see other websites outside of each other. ↩

Post by | February 15, 2016 at 12:00 pm | Real Life | No comment

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