Walking off into the sunset

...Yeah, I did do this once before a few years back for several months, but I think it's time to pull the plug on this blog for now.

A lot of blogs I once followed religiously have gently faded away, with shiny newer toys taking their place, and my post count has steadily dropped the past year or so. I've gone from a couple hundred posts a year to barely managing to post once a month. The engagement level has gone away, too, moved on to other social spheres. Not to sound self-obsessed, but you don't want to write a nice long post about this or that and have it sit there ignored without comment. And now that I work in online media, I have to admit in my "off time" I'm more inclined to spend it away from a screen if I can.

But more or less 8 1/2 years of blogging is a pretty good track record for a rather new medium of writing. There's many other avenues I can explore these days from my day job to the off-the-cuff banter of Facebook and Twitter. It's too tempting sometimes to just keep doing something because you have been doing it for a long time and I've never particularly liked getting stuck in that mold. An awful lot has changed for us in the past 12 months and is continuing to change this year, so it's a good stopping point.

It's been a good run - 1228 posts, made lots of great new friends and spewed forth about everything from music to comics to movies to politics to moving to another country. I'll still be out there in the Net somewhere, and I'll keep the archives alive here, but it's time for a change. Thanks for following along, folks!

500 words or less on why I'm here

To blog or not to blog? ... The question that's been rattling about these last 10 weeks or so since I 'gave up' regular posting on here. I tend to over-think most things that aren't really important enough to overthink, so the question of whether I should keep blogging or not took up a lot of brain space the last couple months of 2009. In the end I thought I'd pull the plug on "Spatula Forum." But I kept feeling that itch to express myself, and while I've also done other creative type pursuits -- taken up sketching a bit more, done various freelance movie and book reviews for papers down here -- in the end the free-form, whatever-the-hell I want to say allure of a blog is mighty compelling. I placed arbitrary "rules" on myself about how much I should post and I think that contributed to a lot of my feeling burned out by the whole thing at the end of the year.

So anyway. After seeing Pavement last week I felt darned itchy, wanting that outlet to blather about the cool gig -- brief comments on Facebook aren't really enough. The itch only went away when I just rambled out a little blog entry on it (and it was cool to see the several hundred hits I got writing a review of a well-known indie rock band's first gig in 10 years).

So I'll dust off the blog, change the design a bit (I've switched from Haloscan commenting so all the old comments are going away, I'm afraid), and I'll scratch this itch sometimes, putting aside any self-defeating notions of "how much" I should blog (a lesson I shoulda learned in 6 years of doing this, I know) and just doing it when and where and why I feel like it. That's why the Internet was put here in the first place, ain't it?

This is the end, my friends...

So we're wrapping up 2009, and we're wrapping up the decade -- and I've decided it's as good a time as any to wrap up this blog as well.



I've been blogging, not daily, but at least a couple times a week, for just shy of 6 years now -- exactly 1,101 posts, starting all the way back in Roseburg, Oregon, in April 2004, and wrapping up at the end of 2009 in Auckland, New Zealand. I've been mulling over quitting for a couple of months now, trying to decide if I was "sure" or not, but in the end it boils down to I feel like I've said most of what I wanted to say here, and I don't want to just keep doing this blog as a chore. I could stumble on for a while longer, but I'd like to try and turn what little spare-time creative energies I've got in a different direction. I won't quit writing, but it's time for something else.

I've really enjoyed doing this blog, and I know I will miss it more than a little bit, especially when the itch hits to rant and ramble on something. The longevity of as new a medium as blogging is uncertain -- some folks do it once or twice and flame out, some carry on daily posts for years and I tremendously respect that. I figure I ended up somewhere in the middle; 6 years is a decent run in today's world.

I never wanted to make this a "one subject" blog so I have written about any variety of things -- books, movies, music, comics, journalism, and of course, chronicling the ins and outs and ups and downs of plans for and migration to New Zealand in 2006. And I started this blog just a couple months after we had our bouncing baby boy Peter, so there's been a lot about what it's been like being a dad on here. I also ended up doing a lot of writing for the fine site BlogCritics as a result of this site, and had a great time doing that and polishing my critical skills.

There's a heck of a lot of fine people I have "met" through this blog, several of whom I've actually gone on to hang out with in person. They're great bloggers and quite interesting folks who have commented or linked a lot. A decade ago I would've said making a "friend" on the Internet was a bit creepy, but many of these folks I've met thanks to this blog are great and not at all creepy -- Ash, Arthur, Andru, Bob Temuka, Roger Green, Mike Sterling, Patrick, Johnny Bacardi, Daniel M., Tom The Dog, Largehearted David, Greg, Mandy, Fred Hembeck, ADD, Uncle E, Beaucoup Kevin, Jeff Parker -- I'm proud to call a lot of you my friends (or at least not mortal enemies) and I'm sure there's many I've left out.

And there are tons of others, friends old and new, who have stopped by to read my words-- every time someone has left a comment on here, I've been gratified, and even if you've been reading and never left one, I still appreciate your time.

I'll still be lurking around the Internet someplace, of course and plan to keep reading the many great blogs out there, some of which are on the blogroll. Thanks again for reading my meanderings these past 5 3/4 years and have yourself a most excellent 2010!

Gone walkabout, mate

...Hurrah, it's holiday time and we're off to the outback. Well, OK, actually to a city of 4 million people, not "Crocodile Dundee" territory by any means. But anyway, we'll be in Australia for a spell, report upon return!

I would totally have watched this show

...Sorry, it's been low content mode this week, been busy and so forth. Posts on vampires, Harlan Ellison and the '80s are on the way eventually. By way of apology here's an amusing bit of YouTubery I ran across:



This would have been the finest artistic expression of the 1980s, I'm certain....

Going down south where the wind does blow

It's school holidays and time for a much-needed family getaway to the remote frozen wastelands of the South Island where the hobbits run free and wild. See you in a couple weeks!