And now, a word from our sponsors

It is Tuesday, Oct. 16, and I have had my Netflix movies at home for a solid month or more. I am essentially paying $15 to not watch movies. I have not seen a movie in theaters since Telluride. Yes, I have watched movies with friends in the interim, but it appears my days of ravenous solo-watching are over. I get home from work and go straight to a social obligation, or I spend time working on other projects, or I go to sleep. Movies, it seems, are taking valuable time away from life.

It is with extreme irony that I now make this pledge: I will post once a day through mid-January. Given extenuating circumstances, I have toyed with dissolving Blog, or simply changing its mission. I have decided to do neither. However, since I will be posting at least once a day til January, you can expect me to address topics that aren't rigidly anchored to film. I will not totter into syrupy personal issues; I will seek to connect what's on my mind with what's on film; but know that I will consider most topics "in bounds." Times change and so must I. Stay with me.

What happens in mid-January, you ask? I take a sabbatical from the Internet (and Blog, and Job, and Life) for six weeks. I will be sailing my way to the other end of the globe for reasons known only to me. I will spend that time on a ship, somewhere between Tokyo and Muscat, with strangers. During that time I will pay attention to my fellow man rather than a computer screen or television. Yes, this means I will miss the Oscars (and the entire Oscar season) for the first time in 13 years. Yes, this means I'm suspending the DZ Oscar Pool just as it's about to hit its remarkable 10th anniversary. Yes, I need to do this. I hope you understand.

I will surely return to Blog when I return to Internet, and Job, and the New World (the second week of March, perhaps). But! We still have all of fall and some of winter together. I will continue to hack away at my Triple Crowners Series, which has been my spurned magnum opus for a couple months. And while this blog has overstayed its welcome since its inception, I will seek to refine it in small ways. You might already notice alterations to Blog's template and sidebar. I will be trying new things. That's what's so great about the film blogosphere: it allows for invention and reinvention, and I'm happy to be doing both, sometimes simultaneously.