News, notes, and an informal hiatus

It’s tough when you take a few days off from blogging and nobody notices. That’s why I’ve decided I better draw attention to the fact that I’m taking an informal hiatus.

hiatus |hʌɪˈeɪtəs|
noun (pl. hiatuses) [ usu. in sing. ]
a pause or break in continuity in a sequence or activity: there was a brief hiatus in the war with France.
• Prosody & Grammar a break between two vowels coming together but not in the same syllable, as in the ear and cooperate.

The astute among you will notice that I call it an informal hiatus instead of the more common brief hiatus, and there’s a good reason for that. If I said brief hiatus, I’d be feeling a lot of pressure to write something pretty soon because, well, brief is … brief.  I think informal works better because it seems more open-ended. I can stay away long enough to do what I need to do, but if I’m simply overcome by the need to write something, I can still do that, then go back into hiatus mode if I want to.

Now you’re probably saying to yourself, “Here’s a guy who only works part-time at a Big Orange Hardware Store, so what could there possibly be that he “needs to do” other than eat, shit, and blog about gnomes?”

Well, I’m going to answer that. Remember my Year in the Death of One Man series that just wrapped up last week? To be honest, it wasn’t my most popular material, but one person who didn’t hate it was a former journalism colleague who wants me to write a feature article and overview of the series for Inside Jersey magazine.

To make a long story short, I agreed to write the piece, which means I’m going to have to really concentrate and try to do a good job, as opposed to churning out the kind of drivel I usually write. And the really hard part is that in order to provide a summary of the series, I’m first going to have to read back through everything I wrote and try to figure out what the hell any of it means. And for those of you who might have read some of it, you know what a daunting task that will be!

Also, I’m going to start moving all the stories from the series into a new, dedicated blog space, which I think will more appropriately showcase that material. I plan to present the stories in the proper chronological order, which should make it a lot easier to understand for any new readers who discover the series through the upcoming magazine article.

My youngest granddaughter lives far from me. Isn’t she cute?

Fortunately for me, I still have a month or so to pull all that together, but keep in mind I also have to continue counting hammers and nails over at Big Orange, and that I’ll be taking time off to visit my granddaughter, who I haven’t seen in like forever.

So that’s all I wanted to tell you. My hiatus won’t be brief and it won’t be extended, it’ll simply be informal, which means I’ll see you when I see you, or when a gnome uprising forces my hand. I’ll be back, just keep a light on for me.