It's been a while...
*Blows dust and cobwebs off the keyboard*
Hello. To quote the great Janet Jackson – “It’s been a while. Lots to talk about.” I’ve been gone a while, haven’t I? In fact, the last review I wrote and published was back in July, which means this is the longest I’ve gone in two years without adding anything new on here. It also means I’m now into the third year running this site, which is frankly a little scary to think about.
I don’t want to waste too much time talking about where I’ve been, but let’s just quickly go over a few of the reasons I’ve been gone:
First of all, while I’ve been away from university during the Summer, for the past couple of months, I’ve been going on a bit of a ‘pop culture catch-up’. Anyone who knows me will tell you that as much as I love film and TV, there is a LOT, and I mean a LOT, of stuff that everyone else has seen that I haven’t. So during the Summer, I’ve been doing my best to catch up on stuff like the 'The Lord Of The Rings' trilogy, 'Pirates Of The Caribbean', the MCU, 'The Lion King', the 'Spider-Man' trilogy, the new 'Planet Of The Apes' trilogy, 'Pulp Fiction', 'Jaws' 'Schindler’s List' etc. etc. I’ve still got a lot more to get through, such as 'The Revenant', 'Gladiator', and I’m working my way through TV shows such as 'Bates Motel', 'Westworld', 'Peaky Blinders' and more. Alongside catching up on a few classic 'Doctor Who' stories I’ve never seen either, this is obviously taking up quite a bit of time.
Secondly, I’ve actually had the vaguest hints of a social life in the last couple of months. I’ve been able to spend a bit more time with my friends recently, visiting some of them at their universities in Wales, and soon we’ll be going further up North to do the same. I’ve also been on a trip to London for the first time, as in almost twenty years of living in the UK, I’d never been to London. Obviously spending more time with friends has also meant that I’ve had a bit less time to work on putting out new reviews.
Thirdly, and probably the biggest reason for why I’ve been gone, is down to my own mental health. Thanks to a cocktail of anxiety, zero self-confidence and intense self-hatred, my mental health the past few years has rarely been good, but I’d always coped until 2018 came along. It’s slowly deteriorated even more this year as I’ve struggled with an increased feeling of inadequacy, having no-one I can talk to honestly or openly, and having recently failed my driving test multiple times – this very nearly killed my enthusiasm for carrying on with this site. Even now sitting here writing this, I know that barely anyone at all will ever read it – some days I’m fine with that, others I think ‘Why bother?’. And when I began to lose my enthusiasm for film and TV as well, two things I absolutely love, I soon had an ‘Enough is Enough’ moment. And here we are now…
So now that I’m back and hoping to get this site running again, to shake things up a little, I’m going to try out a few changes, such as:
Hello. To quote the great Janet Jackson – “It’s been a while. Lots to talk about.” I’ve been gone a while, haven’t I? In fact, the last review I wrote and published was back in July, which means this is the longest I’ve gone in two years without adding anything new on here. It also means I’m now into the third year running this site, which is frankly a little scary to think about.
I don’t want to waste too much time talking about where I’ve been, but let’s just quickly go over a few of the reasons I’ve been gone:
First of all, while I’ve been away from university during the Summer, for the past couple of months, I’ve been going on a bit of a ‘pop culture catch-up’. Anyone who knows me will tell you that as much as I love film and TV, there is a LOT, and I mean a LOT, of stuff that everyone else has seen that I haven’t. So during the Summer, I’ve been doing my best to catch up on stuff like the 'The Lord Of The Rings' trilogy, 'Pirates Of The Caribbean', the MCU, 'The Lion King', the 'Spider-Man' trilogy, the new 'Planet Of The Apes' trilogy, 'Pulp Fiction', 'Jaws' 'Schindler’s List' etc. etc. I’ve still got a lot more to get through, such as 'The Revenant', 'Gladiator', and I’m working my way through TV shows such as 'Bates Motel', 'Westworld', 'Peaky Blinders' and more. Alongside catching up on a few classic 'Doctor Who' stories I’ve never seen either, this is obviously taking up quite a bit of time.
Secondly, I’ve actually had the vaguest hints of a social life in the last couple of months. I’ve been able to spend a bit more time with my friends recently, visiting some of them at their universities in Wales, and soon we’ll be going further up North to do the same. I’ve also been on a trip to London for the first time, as in almost twenty years of living in the UK, I’d never been to London. Obviously spending more time with friends has also meant that I’ve had a bit less time to work on putting out new reviews.
Thirdly, and probably the biggest reason for why I’ve been gone, is down to my own mental health. Thanks to a cocktail of anxiety, zero self-confidence and intense self-hatred, my mental health the past few years has rarely been good, but I’d always coped until 2018 came along. It’s slowly deteriorated even more this year as I’ve struggled with an increased feeling of inadequacy, having no-one I can talk to honestly or openly, and having recently failed my driving test multiple times – this very nearly killed my enthusiasm for carrying on with this site. Even now sitting here writing this, I know that barely anyone at all will ever read it – some days I’m fine with that, others I think ‘Why bother?’. And when I began to lose my enthusiasm for film and TV as well, two things I absolutely love, I soon had an ‘Enough is Enough’ moment. And here we are now…
So now that I’m back and hoping to get this site running again, to shake things up a little, I’m going to try out a few changes, such as:
Big Finish – Big Finish was one of those things I was
aware of for a long time, but was hesitant to start exploring because A) The
cost of many of its productions, B) Its massive, massive discography and not
knowing where to start, and C) The risk of it further complicating 'Doctor
Who's already complex continuity. However, about a year ago, I took the
plunge and listened to both 'Spare Parts' and 'The Fearmonger'. One year
later, I now have a shelf at home dedicated to Big Finish’s releases, so
clearly these two stories worked for me. I haven’t caught up on everything,
because I’m not ridiculously rich enough to do so and I tend to dip in and out
of different ranges and series’ when something grabs my interest. I’ve been
considering writing Big Finish reviews for a while now, so I’m finally going to
take the plunge. So you can now look forward to my regular three sections, Doctor Who, Film and TV being joined
by a fourth: Big Finish.
Format – In the last few reviews I wrote before drifting
from this site, I’ve come to realize that the format and presentation of this
site isn’t as user-friendly as it could be. Clicking on one of my reviews will
take you to a page with just a single picture, and a great big massive block of
text. It isn’t that appealing to look at and seeing so much relatively small
text in one chunk can put people of, especially not since everyone wants to
spend their free time reading entire essays. So to try and remedy this, I’m
going to try including more pictures alongside my reviews and experiment with
the font and text size to something that looks a bit better.
Getting Out There – As I said earlier, I don’t expect
more than one or two people to read this, or even anyone for that matter. The
same applies to everything I’ve written here in the past two years. I’ve been hesitant
trying to share this site around or promote it, because as I also said earlier,
I have no confidence in myself or what I write at all. I’m going to take some
baby steps and try promoting this site a bit more on other social media platforms,
and see how things go.
If anyone has cared enough about this to read all the way
through, thank you so much for listening. I don’t expect anyone to, but if you
have, you’ve made writing this worth it, and it genuinely means the world to me.
New reviews will hopefully be back up and a bit more regularly soon, so until
then, thanks again for reading.
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