I’ve been doing this every day for a year. It’s time for a change.

Regular readers of this blog won’t find this announcement a surprise. On October 12, 2015, I launched this blog. I have made at least one post for every day since. Whether sick, on vacation, entertaining guests, on the road,  or working late nights, I made sure a new post went up every day for the past year. It wasn’t always easy. There were days when I simply didn’t want to do it. There were days when I desperately grasped for a topic and probably cranked out some embarrassing material.

But there were also days when I was exhilarated, when I knew exactly what I wanted to say and how, and was very proud of the final product. In a lot of ways, the blog became easier to write as time went on, as I got accustomed to the routine and more confident in my voice. Out of the 360-odd posts I’ve made, I think there are some real gems (and no doubt some absolute dogs, as well).

The problem is, it takes a lot of energy out of me to work on this blog, and there are other things I’d like to do. I write novels and short stories, I build websites, I make music, I create graphics, I write programs and games. But over the past year, I’ve had very little time or energy to do that, given the time and effort it takes me to work on the blog. On a good day, I need 45-60 minutes to write a post, and that’s usually after an hour or two spent mulling over what I want to say (though I often do this while commuting or otherwise not needing higher brain functions). So it’s not just the hour or so I get back from not writing the post, it’s another couple hours spent thinking about it. That’s time I could use for other pursuits.

I’m not saying I’ll never update this blog again. In fact, I have a book review I plan to put up tomorrow. But at least for the time being, daily updates are done. I went and cleaned out my topic queue, getting rid of topics that I think I’ve either already covered in existing posts, or don’t feel qualified to tackle. It went from about 87 items down to 36, and these are all topics I could at least fill a post about. I don’t know if I’m going down to once a week or once a month. I’m going to play it by ear. I’m sure there will be days I’m just dying to make a post–something so fresh and hot on my mind that I can’t let it go and need to write about it. And then you’ll get a post!

In the meantime, I’ll have to think about what I want to do next. I didn’t do National Novel Writing Month last year, since I was just getting started with the blog and believed there was no way I could do both at once (I am still convinced of that). Maybe I’ll do it this year. There’s also some hobby programming I want to do, maybe work on a game, make some music again. Who knows? I have a lot of options. I doubt I will write about them here much, though, since that’s not what this blog is for. If anything, maybe I’ll link them on another page if anyone is really interested.

I may also work on more feature-length pieces and shop them around to other, more high-profile sites. If that happens, I will certainly link them here!

I want to thank everyone who has followed this blog at any point–if you read a post, left a comment, liked something, gave me feedback, whatever. I appreciate all of you! Your feedback and encouragement helped me get this far.

Until next time, good luck out there!

Photo by woodleywonderworks