Now I am still
and plain:
no more words.

— Rilke

The time has come for this blog to hibernate while I indulge other creative hobbies.

As I’ve said a number of times, I’m just a working fellow with a day job and some entrepreneurial activities on the side. Free time is very hard to come by. For the last several years, I’ve devoted the majority of that free time to writing. Now I’m going to return to my first love, music, and concentrate on re-recording a few dozen of my old songs before seeing what sorts of new stuff I might write, given today’s incredible technology and more than a decade’s worth of new influences.

I want to immerse myself in it, which is why I’m not going to attempt to keep writing at the same time. That would only lead to the frustration of trying to do too much with too little time, and as a result, failing to do any of it satisfactorily. So, now, when I’m done with work and chores, I want my default setting to be picking up a guitar, rather than surfing the web. When I’m bored, I want to open up GarageBand and play with new sounds, rather than open a browser and play with the same old words. I aim to form an entirely new practice of leisure, to instill new habits. That’s the positive vision. On the negative side, I can feel diminishing returns setting in: I’m satisfied with the perspective I’ve attained, I’ve explored most of the available topics within my limited reach and ability, and I’m frankly just bored and/or weary of most online discourse. Books are far more worthwhile for inspiration, and I do plan to get a lot more reading done as well, but it takes a lot of time to fully consider the perspectives and insights that books offer. Better, in my view, to just close the lid on my brain stew and let those ingredients simmer unwatched for a while.

I’m not making any promises or suggesting any timetables. Weeks? Months? Years? I don’t know. I’ll just go as the spirit moves me. I seriously doubt I could ever quit writing, any more than I could quit being musical (in my mind, I’ve just taken a fifteen-year nap during recording). And I may yet escape from the rat race and find myself with more free time than I’ve ever had (that’s still the active plan, anyway). Until that time, then…