So, people reading this blog might be looking at that title and going "Wait, you retired?"
Well...yes, technically speaking. I basically gave up on reviewing when 2017 rolled around, despite a full intention to return, and I knew I was done when an attempt to get back into it early this year resulted in me giving up within a few weeks. It was a combination of factors that made me finally give up, but a stress-induced burnout, poor managing of my own finances because of spending lots of money on music on iTunes, frustration over attempts at making a collaborative project only to become the only reliable contributor while also trying to be an editor and admin, a general shift in life priorities thanks to getting a girlfriend and the monumental disappoint that was Catharsis by Machine Head (no, seriously: that pretty much killed my momentum dead on its own!) finally put the nail in the coffin that arguably had be laid and ready to close for a long time.
So, why am I back? Well, I had been considering moving from album purchases for a while, but no streaming service had really worked for me before now because I live in an area where internet quality is pretty poor (so streams can be unreliable for me), I tend to be on the move a lot (so being able to download music for listening on the go is actually the best thing for me) and I never liked having ads pop up during albums (it's kind of hard to focus on the flow of an album when that flow keeps getting interrupted by some random ad for no reason). However, I had been encouraged to shift towards Apple Music for a few months now by my family and I decided to give it a go, since my trusty iPod finally broke due to an accidental sudden impact with the stone on the kitchen floor and my new phone is an Android phone after switching from an iPhone due to it having a battery life the average mayfly would be embarrassed by.
I won't claim that it's magically fixed everything, but it really is the thing I've been looking for and I really am kicking myself for not giving it a shot ages ago. I did have to wait a good while before I had to leave home (though having a massive iTunes library to sync up to Apple Music PROBABLY didn't help) and it took a while to finally get set up on it (that took an hour alone!), but, once I got set up, it really did cover everything I needed from a music service: free music to listen to whenever I wanted to, an ability to take the music I wanted to listen to with me when leaving the house at no extra cost, no ads, the ability to bring up recommendations for stuff which I genuinely wasn't aware of and surprisingly not that intensive on my phone battery! I do have my gripes with it and I will admit to being disappointed that it doesn't let you sync up your physical albums to the library (though that one is probably more on Apple than anything else), but, all told, I'm pretty happy with the whole service!
This alone wasn't what made me decide to unretire (though I would be lying if I said it wasn't a big factor). See, I want to get back into reviewing music again, because I realised that I have been listening to some stuff which isn't talked about much in English-speaking circles and I want to add my voice to the debate. Now, I won't be returning exclusively as a metal critic, I should say that now: it is very likely that my first album review back from retirement will actually be an acid-jazz album from a band from Venezuela (if you know who I'm on about already, good for you!) and I want to discuss other stuff which is of interest to me, as I think I can provide a good voice on video games (though any new releases covered will likely be restricted to stuff which isn't especially expensive or more general discussions which can come from a particular game) and I want to discuss more anime than I currently do.
I also am going to say right now: there will be NO schedule for stuff. I genuinely want to get back into doing stuff again, but I also have other priorities which I have to dedicate time to and I have to prioritise them over writing. I will try to be prolific when I get a chance to have a proper writing session and schedule stuff out so that there aren't long gaps between content, but I can't promise this will actually happen, so please be understanding if there are long gaps between content!
Thanks to everyone who has followed my writing for your patience over the last year and a half. Seriously, I didn't intend to be gone for this long when I stopped writing originally and I hope that this ends up being worth the wait!
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