Hiatus?

Things have slowed down here lately — by my standards at least. I went one week without posting anything and someone genuinely asked me if I was doing okay.

I’ve decided to try and make a few changes around here. I have been struggling with my mental health a bit over the past month or so — a post on which, alongside readings of The Logic of Sense, I’m still trying to finish.

Last week I restarted my antidepressants. I’d reduced the frequency of my dosage to one tablet a week over the last year but I think this destabilised my brain chemistry far more than I had realised. I had a short string of life stresses recently and they completely knocked me over. I decided that I needed to start taking these little things properly again and, now one week in, I’ve already levelled out and feel like I’m back to normal. However, by putting my mania on a tighter leash, it’s also dulled my drive to write here so obsessively.

I still intend to post here but things might run a bit differently, so here are a few house-keeping announcements regarding the near-future of this blog:

URL change — All past links may now be dead, I’m very sorry to say, but I have decided to embrace the alternative name that Twitter forced upon me and go with “Xenogothic” rather than “Xenogoth”. It’s grown on me to the point that I now prefer it and I feel like that minor addition of an “-ic” is more representative of what I’ve been writing on this blog. I’ve felt this way for a while but it seemed like it was too late. Well, now I’ve done it and there’s no going back so please excuse the adjustment period.

Patchwork — I’ve written so much here over the past nine months and ideas are continuing to grow and develop. I am starting too feel like this is becoming a project that is too big for this blog and so I’m going to try and spend the next few months polishing and extending a bunch of old posts. I think I might have enough material for a book… But I’ve also drafted a PhD proposal that I’m starting to shop around a bit… Either way, this stuff is going to be channelled elsewhere for a bit but I hope a more polished exploration of patchwork and Accelerationism will see the light of day in another way soon. Whilst I’m waiting for new topics to use this blog for, things might be a bit empty here for a bit.

Photography — Prior to starting this blog, I used to keep all my writing to myself and just post pictures elsewhere. That’s been the case for the best part of 10 years now. I stopped photoblogging completely once I started writing here (although I’ve tried to include pictures in my posts when appropriate). As a way of making up for the slower pace of my writing, I want to start posting photo-only posts here again in future as a sort of photo-diary. It’s just another way of thinking, after all. I already have a six month backlog of photographs that I’ve neglected so I’ll probably post the first of these soon.

As ever, thank you for reading and for all your comments. So much of the writing that’s appeared here so far wouldn’t exist were it not for people being so provocative and responsive to so many different ideas.