The present and future of Rambling Fox

Hello everyone, the few bold and fair who actually follow this blog.

As you may see, I’ve been away for a while – almost a year, in fact. I apologise for the lack of posts and especially for any lack of explanation as to why that is. So, in case you feel like I owe you one, here’s the short version why: 2013 burned me out from music writing. I tried making music writing a Serious Thing in 2013: I tried to keep Rambling Fox steadily updated with both news, reviews and articles while trying to craft an identity for it, while at the same time I joined a professional music site for a while as a reviewer to make myself a point. And with all that, I did understand a few things. One, trying to adhere to any strict schedules when it comes to a casual hobby site is not only hard to do when you have so much else going on in your life, but also defeats the whole fun aspect of it. Two, writing about new music as it comes out might be great for some but not for me. Rambling Fox has always been pretty late when it comes to new releases and that’s because I heartily believe in the power of letting music get to you. In order to fully understand and appreciate a release, it needs to spend time with you and it needs to go through the test of time. With brand new music, you don’t get that and all you get are ultimately superficial reflex reactions that are bound to be outdated a month down the line and even moreso after that. I genuinely struggled staying up to date and writing about music as it was released.

At the end of 2013 writing about music had become a chore and I intended to take a small break from it. That break became a year long. Whoops. In the meantime, I’ve greatly enjoyed listening to new music once more without constantly thinking about what to write about it straightaway, stressing about blog update speed, etc. I’ve been able to just listen, love and analyse in my head without having the need to make up my mind “officially” about it. I had no rush to go back to Rambling Fox and eventually it vanished away from my mind completely.

In the past few months I’ve started getting excited about music writing again. I love music and I love nerding out about it, and writing about it is something I genuinely love doing. But trying to go about it like I have done in the past with all the blogs I’ve been involved with just doesn’t cut it. However, I have other ideas. I’ve recently started to design a yet another new blog but this time with an entirely different premise, one that more accurately matches how I want to write about music and one that’s different enough that converting Rambling Fox into it just wouldn’t work. I don’t want to overburden myself with sites either. Hence, Rambling Fox is going to go.

I’m going to do one more proper update on this blog, a yearly top 10 list of 2014’s best albums. It’s an appropriate way to close off the site for the time being and it also allows anyone who cares to find out what I actually appreciated in 2014. After that, RF will fall into slumber and I will slowly begin working on my next adventure, which I will link to once the time is appropriate.

I genuinely have no idea how many people follow this, if any, but if you do then thank you so much for caring.

The top 10 of 2014 list will be out sometime before Christmas. Stay tuned!