A blog rethink–but it’s far from all over!

Me getting cosy with the Silurian known as Mette

Regular readers of this blog (I know there’s one or two of you out there) may have noticed something of a drop off in the rate of posts of late. If you’re waiting for my thoughts on True Blood, perhaps, you might be wondering why I’ve not said anything about the last two weeks’ episodes.

There’s a reason for this. I’ve got a full time job now, and in the exciting world of education, this is the busiest time of year – not even counting the continual ‘reform’ demands of the masterminds at the Department for Education. As a result, I’m spending more and more time at the office making sure the summer exams get marked, and finding less and less time to write. Something has to give. And – for a while, anyway – it’s going to be the writing.

Stress takes its toll on your dress sense…

Not all of it, mind. But it’s getting impossible to keep up with doing weekly episode reviews of all my favourite shows – particularly given that virtually all of them are broadcast on Sunday evenings. It takes an hour or so to watch the show, half an hour maybe to do some screencaps, perhaps a bit of time for background research on shows like Mad Men or The Newsroom, and maybe two hours to write the lengthy essays that I laughingly term ‘reviews’.

Factor in working late and commuting, and each post effectively takes up one entire evening. Sometimes I’m so knackered from work that I guiltily procrastinate, and before you know it, I’ve missed several weeks’ worth of things. Longtime readers (yes, I’m egotistically hoping I have some) may have already noticed the abrupt disappearance of my weekly Dallas reviews following a couple of weeks out of the country.

Here I am, in another country.

So I’m going to take a break. At the mo, the only show I had started to review weekly was True Blood, and to be honest, that’s been stuck for the last couple of seasons in a “not great but not terrible” kind of state. There’s nothing more boring than reviewing something you can neither praise nor snidely mock, so I’m going to knock those on the head. I may come back to weekly reviews for the return of The Newsroom in a couple of weeks – it depends on my workload at that job thing I do.

Reviewing so many shows on a weekly basis was never my intention. I actually started this blog primarily because my brief forum comments on each week’s Doctor Who were turning into epic essays. I used to do brief snippets on lots of things, including my other interests of politics and cars.

I also like cars…

But when I was unemployed, I found a lot of writing time, so the weekly TV reviews ballooned at the expense of everything else. I’d like to think a lot of you enjoyed them; but I miss writing other things, too.

So here’s what – I’m stopping weekly episode reviews at least for a little while. I may come back to them for The Newsroom; I definitely will for Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, Mad Men and Game of Thrones. For now, though, I’m going to try writing other things, like I used to. Things that aren’t all about what was broadcast the same night of the week. Have a try – hopefully  you’ll enjoy them.