So - over a year later...

Hi there! If there's anyone still checking.

If so, Welcome Back and I applaud and appreciate your tenacity/stubbornness in reading this site. Enjoy it while it lasts - I've made promises to keep churning out content before, only to have huge gaps in the timeline. Which is better than just leaving an abandoned site with the last entry in the early 2010s, I guess.

It's been quite a year, for everyone. Since my last entry, my grandmother died from complications related to Covid and my mother died two months ago in her sleep from a hemorrhage, in addition to other friends who didn't make it out of 2020. A year later, after declaring that 'We Won Covid, Now Get Back To Work™', and 'Back To Normal®', news of the Delta Variant (more contagious) becoming the main strain this Fall/Winter comes along in tandem with the Slow Death of American Democracy ramping up for Act 1.

Those are really good reasons for not providing content, but there were/are plenty others around before 2020 got underway, as we all can guess from the figurative digital wreckage on the lamented 'Information Superhighway'.  As the saying goes, "Ass, Gas or Grass - Nobody Rides For Free" and it's as true in the digital realm as it is in the Real World - Personal Data is the coin of the realm, and it's even better when people give up their data without any coercion involved.

It was pretty charming, at first, sharing your life and finding other like-minded people out there - there are still online friendships  that I maintain & cherish that, frankly, would not have happened otherwise. And that's the one thing that keeps that hesitation in cutting the cord/plug still alive, despite the increasing evidence that it would be a Good Thing in the long run.

At this point - over 50, aged/aging out of hipster entertainments & eateries and misanthropic in my best moods - isolating from Everything will merely hasten the pace of the slow death path I can say that I'm officially on. Not overstating for effect - having helped take care of aging relatives for the last 25 years, you recognize the landmarks and signs; and I've seen time & time again how it ends when you insist on ignoring them. So... hey. There It Is.

Facebook also kinda killed the need - why spend time attempting to write (hopefully) coherent  and/or entertaining things when guerrilla hit-and-run entries get the job done too? Fortunately, never got into the Twitter mindset  and as for TikTok/Vine/Whatever Else - "OK, Grandpa." Proudly.

So - wanting to stretch those longer-form writing muscles with the Specter of Death hovering around.  Easy to understand.  And coming to terms that it's not going to probably change things at this point, except in improving my mental health - I've written off and on over the past 25 - 30? years now, but not made any sort of living from it. Not having that burning drive to pursue it like my life depended on it and not really understanding how the game is played... not that it matters now.

But the well isn't quite dry yet. So, I'll try my best to wring out what's left; a good portion of stuff was for publications that no longer exist or are extremely hard to find except for the dedicated reader of physical media - some of that will be dredged up to see light again (unless it's judged to be completely horrible).  There'll also be newer things - the film reviews I do can be found over at 366 WeirdMovies from time to time, but there'll be some spillover for things that don't quite fit there; the sister blog on music, Music Snob, is getting a workover and refocus, so the music stuff will end up over there.

And I guess we'll all see how this goes.

Up to speed...

So... what's new with YOU?

Yeah.

So the blogging thing sort of became not so much of a thing, which is understandable - so much has gone the way of the buffalo within the past 10 years - well, even 5 as people get older, lives change and the burning obsession to share minutia of one's life has migrated towards creating a persona on FB &/or Twitter. In my particular case, it was a combination of various things - helping to take care of my grandmother until we were able to get her into a facility that could handle her needs and take the immediate burden off of us so we could go on with our lives... brutal, yes, but true. I'm the youngest in my immediate family and I'm in my mid-50's as of this writing. The film work - PAID work, that is - started getting less & less every year, and even though I've been through long stretches before, this may well be it (although I've said THAT before several times also) as far as trying to aggressively pursue it further - it never got close to a point where I could solely survive on it in any case. And underlying all of that is my intrinsic laziness - to not want to do ANYTHING after taking care of other pressing things.

So, 2019 - my mother came to live w/us, which was not unexpected, due to medical reasons. What was not expected was that we would lose her sister later in the year, due to cancer, which she'd been fighting since 2005; November 2019 - January 2020 was spent with handling that situation, which within a month she went from home to being in the hospital for surgery to hospice to her death right before Christmas... then setting up a sale of their belongings, clearing out the apartment and having to deal with her idiot son who denied the entire situation for the last few years and his bullshit.

Finally ready to get back into the job market, then Covid-19 started its American Tour.

Personally, there's no big change in Daily Life B/A (Before/After) Covid-19 - most of whom I'd term as close friends I keep in touch with mainly online and that's been the case for quite awhile; there's no longer the burning need to travel an hour for some 'exciting' thing, since there's quite enough in a personal collection to keep me occupied (it helps saves on gas, too). And as far as going outside, we're fortunate enough to have enough yardspace to be able to go outside when we need to (well, when I need to; I do the yardwork), so overall, we're pretty fortunate. All of us in the home are high-risk, but since I'm the one most likely to bring it into the home, due to the occasional grocery errand, I'm very careful as to venturing out into CovidLand.

So, I have a lot of time on my hands - again - but in this instance, there's not quite the ticking time bomb of needing to 'go back to normal'. That ended in March and nobody - repeat, NOBODY - knows exactly what's ahead.

Slowly, the urge to write again kept getting stronger, but there was always something to push it into "I'll get to that later," territory. Well, it seems that Now is Indeed The Time to Get To It. So - Hi! It's been awhile, I know... I'm honest enough to say that this may not be a Daily thing - there's still so much else to do. But some of that 'else' will go into fueling more content, so it will be more regular than it has been for sometime. As to what led me back to it... that's on its way. First, a reintroduction for those who followed & might be interested in following again - considering the current situation, it seemed the thing to do.

There's one more thing to get out of the way before things get running again - Next Time...