Time For a Writing Hiatus As A Blogger

IT'S TIME FOR A WRITING HIATUS AS A BLOGGER - TO WORK ON MY UPCOMING SERIES ON ARTIST TOM THOMSON

I'D LIKE TO DO IT ALL, BUT MY BODY IS FALLING APART

     In the past year, well, you know as friends of this blog, I've had a half dozen legitimate situations arise, which have forced me to take hiatus periods from blogging; they've all been good reasons at the precise moment I decided to take the break, and a little like tag team wrestling, but without anyone outside the ring to tag to take over. On occasions when I've felt, for a variety of reasons, felt exhausted and frankly, all-written out. I've had to use my archive materials on many occasions, because I simply couldn't muster a new blog. I appreciate having a great audience, and I always take my writing challenges seriously, and with good cheer, but there are times these days, when my body and mind are unwilling to participate in my excesses. I suffer from back, shoulder and leg problems that are proportional to the way I work at this laptop, and like carrying a fifty pound bag of potatoes on your back, the repetitive side of things beats down everything that resides below.
     This year, our antique business is on track to have one of its best years ever, and it will have everything to do with an anticipated tourist season boom here in South Muskoka. Last year we were caught of guard, in the antique wing of our Gravenhurst business, and the so-called tourist season lasted well past Thanksgiving. This year, with lower prices at the gas pumps, and the much lower Canadian dollar, we are expecting it to be even more demanding than last summer, which honestly, put stresses on our family I couldn't believe. We are a family business and we are both management and staff. We can not possibly complain about having too much business, but unfortunately, finding time for lunch and well, writing this blog, was difficult last year, and will be almost impossible once March Break arrives, because this is when the surge began in 2015. For a beleaguered retail sector, in small town Ontario, this is something to rejoice, and, obviously, take advantage of as much as possible.
     Suzanne, my long suffering partner in this antique enterprise, needs my help during the day, and while she sympathizes with my passion for writing blogs, I can't let her shoulder all the work while I sit in a comfortable chair, in an air conditioned room, playing at this laptop for my own posterity. So I hope you understand, that this time, the boss has spoken, and if I want the kind of happy retirement both of us have been preparing for, since the late 1980's, having a nice little antique enterprise, I have little choice but to sacrifice something, and unfortunately, it has to be this daily blog.
     Additionally, I am working on a year-plus feature series on the life and work of Canadian landscape artist, Tom Thomson, for the wonderful little publication I write for, known as, "Curious; The Tourist Guide," scheduled to begin in June of this year, and it is going to be quite a challenge; a sort of culminating series on Thomson, who I have been writing about since the mid 1990's. July 2017, will mark the 100th anniversary of his death, of alleged drowning, in Alqonquin Park's Canoe Lake. My series, if everything goes according to Hoyle, will end with the October 2017 issue. The series is going to take a lot of research and many rough drafts of columns to get it right. It's not a series I can rush and nothing I've written so far, even in these blogs, will work for a year-plus series. So I haven't given up writing that's for sure. I will occasionally have editorial pieces for our Currie's Antiques facebook page. Suzanne has not threatened to leave me, or catapult me into a neighbor municipality, if I don't cease and desist my blogging activities. But she deserves a break and I'm the fellow who has to give it to her; and freeing up some shop time is a good first start.
     This blog, at this date, has had approximately 312,000 views, and of this, I am full of gratitude for my readership. How could I be anything but flattered and feeling fortunate to have made so many new friends over the nearly four and a half years I've been working on this site. But damn-it, I'm feeling like an eighty-five year old Swede (remember those commercials on television), and I haven't hit my sixty-first birthday yet. This writing thing has hurt my body as much as playing hockey for so many years. I'd like to see if abstinence from this keyboard, will help my poor old gnarled hands and particularly, my fingers that hurt with each depression of one of these keys. We'll see. There's lot of back copy in my archives to peruse in my absence. One day, I may decide, especially if my aches and pains don't subside, to simply return and "suck-it-up" as my hockey coach Don Thur, used to say, when I came to the bench with an injury, I felt was somewhat worthy of sympathy. "Back in the net Currie. The back-up goalie has the trots. And none of these other guys want to take a turn at goaltending." I'm going on hiatus for awhile to help Suzanne gear up for the summer season, and hoping, the rest from this keyboard will help my body heal.
    Thanks for all your support in the past four-plus years. You've made an old writer a very happy fellow; feeling validated is a pretty big deal to a journeyman writer who, by the way, doesn't have a room, or even a shelf (or even an inch of wall space) devoted to the display of awards received from my peers in this profession. But the only award I ever needed, to pound out this copy for all these years, was knowing that a few readers out there, rather enjoyed tuning in daily, to see what I was up to, at 7 p.m. each night, on that particular day, during that week, and month, and pray tell, to find out the reason for my latest hop-up onto my beat-up old soap box; the one I climbed onto in order to complain about municipal politics and of course, the inconsistencies of parking enforcement in our town, still a big issue for me. But every blogger has to call it quits sooner or later, and I'd prefer that my curtain call wasn't at the insistence of the grim reaper. Fare thee well good friends. Thanks. And cheers!