Ever since I began the process of disengaging from NABC, which diligent future historians will observe taking place at various intervals in the year 2015 (and which isn't yet concluded), my relationship with beer has been in flux.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just different.
The world of beer has changed considerably during the past decade, and so have I. So have all of us. At times these days I want to throw Molotov cocktails at what I perceive beer is in the process of becoming, but at other times I love it as much as I always did.
Yeah, it's complicated.
To get to the point, and stated simply, my head currently isn't in alignment with the effort required to maintain two blogs. For whatever reason, NA Confidential -- which I've always referred to as my "public affairs" outlet -- has absorbed most of my time in recent years, with results that better reflect my interests, and that have produced gains in terms of readership.
As my column there Thursday explains, it makes more sense to fold my beer writing into NA Confidential, while keeping The Potable Curmudgeon as an archive (and ready source for cannibalizing past ideas).
All of these considerations also feed into an impending personal reality check. It was planned for me to take a year off to regroup, and the missus has been patient, but now the year is over. The column explains it; just know that easing back into the game via altered circumstances is the path I'll likely be pursuing.
In the meantime, look for beer writing at NAC prefixed by THE BEER BEAT, and remember that everything I've just explained could be obsolete the day after tomorrow. I'm playing things by ear, readying to go to the mattresses, and whichever other tired cliche might be inserted here.
Of course, anyone who might be in the market for an unemployed curmudgeon who can write a bit and probably is otherwise unemployable might be able to delay my entrepreneurial plans.
To those of you who've been eavesdropping here these many years, I cannot thank you enough. There'll yet be a few things to tidy up here, and I'll get to them soon enough. Cheers!
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ON THE AVENUES: It’s never too late to beer all over again.
It isn’t that I’ve fallen out of love with beer. We’re not divorced or anything. A better word is estranged, which implies an alienation of affection, but doesn’t entirely rule out the possibility of reconciliation.
These thoughts occurred to me recently as I was contemplating the future of The Potable Curmudgeon, my beer-themed blog. It dates to 2005, and has enjoyed some fine moments over the years, though recently my commitment to maintaining it has waned.
Slightly less so Roger’s Simple Beer Pleasures, a page at Facebook that I started in late 2015. It is far better suited to the truncated social-media-driven attention spans ruling the planet at present, including my own, at least as it pertains to beer and brewing.
In spite of my efforts, I can’t seem to make The PC blog and Simple Pleasures work in harmony the way NA Confidential’s blog and Fb page do, primarily because my efforts are half-hearted.
There’s the rub.
I care more about what I’m writing at NA Confidential than The Potable Curmudgeon, so I’m willing to make the time at one and not the other. Taking it a step further, this indiscipline owes to my sense of estrangement from the world of beer and brewing. It isn’t that I don’t enjoy writing about beer, thinking about it and even drinking it, just that it isn’t a daily priority at present.
Consequently, I’ll be altering the routine in the weeks to come. The beer writing I undertake will be featured here at NA Confidential, and I’ll allow The Potable Curmudgeon to remain dormant as an archive.
Perhaps Fridays will be NAC’s Beer Day, or some such. Since so much of my beer writing has sought connectivity between beer and other interests in my life, putting them all in one place rather than separating them makes the most sense.
That is, until it doesn’t.
Read the rest here.
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