Friday 30 January 2015

Moving on

Today is a significant day for me, which I am spending at home where I can shut the world out.
It is also the day I stop writing this blog for good. No ‘maybe’ or ‘perhaps if’; I’ve thought about it throughout a month when new and major challenges have appeared from nowhere and my mind is made up. My spare time from this month is strictly limited, so it has to focused and (to be honest) fun.
Since I began the blog the island has changed considerably, and so have both my interests and personal circumstances. Also, the blog has become technically too unwieldy, and far too wide-ranging for me to stay reliably informed on many issues. I can no longer be all the things all the people who followed it want me to, and in many cases no longer want to.
So, I am reviving one older experimental blog at https://manxlowlife.wordpress.com/ and closing down my others permanently. Meanwhile, in paper form, the column of the same name which sparked this blog will appear bi-monthly in HI! (Humanism Ireland) for as long as the editor thinks it relevant.
To be honest, the increasing conservatism of humanist publications might mean feckless individualists like me have a future in them almost as finite as print anyway. Gay atheists who have read me in their publications know of my particular scorn for Secular Methodism (a self-explanatory term I coined, but don’t enforce copyright on), so if these prissy preachers are the future of Humanism TM I really need another place from which to laugh at the world.
All of which may explain why at https://manxlowlife.wordpress.com/ I will concentrate solely on one topic that interests and irritates me, the creeping neo-puritanism of this island.
But if anyone else has a personal interest in the topics which used to be staples here – YOU write about it. And, seriously, good luck to you.
Well, it has been a blast. See any fellow shallow hedonists amongst you on the other side.