I am old. Like, really fucking old. In fact, I turn 54 in around two months and, as is my want this time of year, I’ve been looking back over the past twelve months to see what is what.

It hasn’t made for great reading.

Not the writing, of course. That is excellence of the highest order. But I find myself in the same situation I was in when I first started this site, in its various forms, a couple of years ago. The same situation I found myself in when I took my tentative first steps into the world of freelance writing.

I’m broke as shit, tired as balls, and burnt the fuck out.

So, I’ve decided I’m not gonna try and make a career out of this anymore.

I’m done chasing trends. I’m done trying to promote scenes whose fan bases want them to stay so far underground they’re buried with the corpses. And I’ll be buggered if I’m going back to the shark tank of freelance work, because I don’t have it in me to step on other people’s backs or kiss ass just to get ahead.

Fuck that.

I’ll go back to cleaning toilets for a living before that happens.

Which leads me to the question: well, what the hell do I do now?

The answer is simple.

I remember why I started writing in the first place.

I started for the love of it. For the enjoyment of putting pen to paper — because I’m fucking old — and jotting down my thoughts on shit that means something to me.

And that’s what I’m going to do.

No more news. No more new album reviews, unless something really catches my ear. No more trying to convince myself that I need to write about something simply because everyone else is writing about it.

Just my thoughts on life, the universe, and everything, as the great Douglas Adams once said.

You see, I figure that if I’m lucky — and I mean really fucking lucky — I’ve got another twenty, maybe twenty-one years left on this planet.

And I’ll be fucked if I’m gonna waste another second of it chasing a cheap buck.