Temporarily(?) Closed For Business

In what is probably not a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention the last few months, I decided today to suspend posting on this blog indefinitely.

The funny thing is, it's actually a surprise to me. I had two unfinished drafts sitting on my panel, and one of them was only started on Monday. It was a potentially good post - the first part of a series, in fact - on a topic that interests me. I had already been researching it last week.

...And I realized today that I didn't care. No, I still care about the topic, and the research I was doing. I just didn't care if I ever finished the post, or any of the subsequent posts that would need to be written.

Do you remember the tribute post I did about Casey Kasem in June? The link to the story on the Xenorama Facebook page got picked up by Facebook's Trending Topics. Its reach is 38,368 people, it has been liked by 102 people, and it has been shared 20 times. Impressive! But the actual blog entry - the thing I wrote - only has 310 views. That's less than 1% of the people who saw the Facebook link.

I keep deleting things I've written because it sounds like I'm whining. I never expected much of a readership when I started this blog, and I'm surprised I ever found one at all. It's just that I've been doing this for awhile, and my enthusiasm for writing most of the content here has been wavering. If there's not an audience for it, and I'm not feeling it, it seems kind of silly to keep going.

I don't know, five and a half years sounds like a good run for a blog to me. I've had a lot of fun here. But there comes a time when you have to know when to move on, and I have the sneaking suspicion this is that time for this blog. It was difficult to end the fanzine and the message board that were the previous incarnations of OWARI. It was difficult to abandon the LiveJournal that had been my blogging headquarters since 2003. Heck, it was hard to close the books on Return of Jetman in December and Pictures of Naomi Morinaga in March (I don't think I ever mentioned the closing of the latter, but yeah, it's done). I just think maybe I should be looking in different directions.

To be clear, I'm not disappearing. Ohhhhhh no, far from it. You can still find me on:

Twitter

Tumblr

I'm also still fighting the good fight of remembering Rene Bond at Rene Bond Tribute (220 Likes strong!) and still posting images related to movie serials (sometimes only tangentially) at Continued Next Week! (currently at 145 followers!).

There are also preliminary plans for something "major" to come down the line at some point. When? I have no idea right now. Keep your eyes open on Twitter and Tumblr, and all should be revealed... one day.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's to never rule out anything. With that in mind, I'm not ruling out this blog making a thrilling comeback someday. I'm not even ruling out a random post or two straggling into publication when it's least expected. But if this really is "the end" for OWARI, I want to at least acknowledge it, and say thank you to all of you who have been reading and commenting over the years.

Remember, it's not "Goodbye," just "See you around!"