Those were the days, my friend, I thought they'd never end ...

Dear FOQ

So, there was supposed to be a blog post up this weekend.

It was drafted; about eighty per cent of the photographs had their signature white borders:

and I’d found trailers to substantiate at least two of the things I’ve been watching lately (the third was subjected to a completely pointless précis).

I’d even made gifs of Joey Tribbiani showing that he could act both cold …

and old:

Then I sat back, looked upon the waffle I had written, and the screengrabs I had grabbed from an Aussie serial from the 1990s (Come in Spinner, in case you were wondering).

I looked over the photographs with their signature white borders.

I contemplated those screengrabs and those gifs (and decided to feature the gifs anyway because Joey is just magnificent) and those web links, and I thought,

Yes, I’m afraid it has come to this.

I have lost my blogging mojo.

It might not be a permanent loss of mojo but it’s certainly been a few months in the offing.

I will say, I don’t want to kill off TQB altogether and I won’t.

I’ve put a lot into it over the years, and I like to think I’ve cultivated a voice.

At one point I even had a readership who engaged regularly with what I was throwing out there; now I’m not even sure anyone’s reading.

Not even my mother.

The platform has to change and move on, as the content itself has to.

Four years ago, life (beyond the realms of work) for TQB was more or less about fitting in reading fifty books in a year, rocking out at gigs in Reigate and eating cheesy chips in a bus stop afterwards.

Life now is very different (better in some ways, too different to be comparable in others), but by the same token I am trying very hard to maintain some semblance of routine in my life, which can result in blog posts coming across very samey.

(Especially given I’ve been reading the same novel since January, and with one or two exceptions I’ve only been watching films lately that have Rebecca “Not the X-Factor Finalist” Ferguson in them because, well, dubbing aside – and we can't blame her for that – it turns out she’s actually wondrous.)

Try as I might (and let’s be honest, I haven’t really tried all that hard these last couple of months) I can’t muster the energy to document my weekly or fortnightly shenanigans for the benefit of anyone who might not have been present to witness them anyway.

I also can't muster the enthusiasm  to sit in front of a computer screen until late on a Sunday night. She says, sitting in front of her computer screen until late on a Monday night, stewing in self-resentment for feeling as though I've wasted my Bank Holiday somehow.

Even if I did go walking.

So, FOQ, this is the upshot: I’m rewarding TQB with a sabbatical.

TQB and I need a proper rest and reboot, and we think it’s best that we don’t surface until she and I (and yes, it’s still me, I’m just speaking of my alter-ego in the third person because what’s a blog post without a ton of pretentiousness?) have recovered our mojos and worked out how best to use the Quirky Brunette platform in a world of quick-fix social media.

In the meantime, I will try to populate my Instagram more frequently with photographs of things that aren’t just coffee cups, cocktails, my dinners and The View from my Train (although those can be pretty).

I might also use the TQB Facebook platform to share silly or interesting links that would ordinarily have made it onto the blog.

We’ll just see how it goes.

Thank you all for your support.

Over and out (but not forever).

qb xx