I haven’t written an entry for several months.  I blame work, general low energy, and some discouragement over the state of the world.

I ran into a site called “Grumpy Old Bookman” while I was googling a book review and then found out he had retired from blogging in 2007.   He wrote:

Long ago, in another life, I took a walk round the office corridors and thought about what lay behind the closed doors: quite a number of men of around my own age (then 55-60), grey-haired, grey-suited, grey-faced. Some of them weren’t any too well. I decided it was time to go. So I did.

I retired from full-time employment. After which, of course, I had all the time in the world. Ha! If you only knew. First law of the universe: everything takes longer than you think.

Anyway, at some point thereafter I started blogging. Which took up an increasingly large amount of time, albeit in a most enjoyable and interesting way. Then, back in February this year, I gave notice here on the GOB that I was no longer going to be blogging on a regular basis. Why? Mainly because of the need to do other things, things which were either equally or more pressing.

Move forward a few months and it so happens that I have been able to blog fairly regularly once again. Now, however, I find that there are, also once again, numerous family and personal commitments which really do have a much higher call on my time than the blog.

Blogging I’ve learned takes time and thought as well as being on the computer.  Since I’ve been spending large hunks of my time at work on the computer, coming and home and doing so has not been a priority.  As the grumpy bookman said

So, the only sensible thing to do, I feel, if the quart will demonstrably not fit into the pint pot, is to stop blogging altogether. Which is what I intend to do, at least for a while. Call it a sabbatical. I hope — and even intend — to be back one day. But it will probably be a year.

As I also noted back in Feb, I am not the first blogger to recognise this problem. See Mad Max, Miss Snark, Poddy Mouth. And if you look again at Mad Max’s last few posts, you will begin to suspect that the pressure of blogging on top of a more than full-time job did indeed make him a little mad. I’m not in that position, fortunately (or so I kid myself). But I do have other things to do which are undeniably more important than tapping away here.

Unfortunately, he has been gone since 2007.  My hiatus has not been that long.  I am not sure I still have any readers as I haven’t even commented on any other blogs in a while, but for my own enjoyment I am going to start up again.

As they used to say:  “Stay ‘tooned”.  I think I have stuff to say again.