I have diagnosed myself with something that is worrying for anybody who sits down at a keyboard for any length of time. That problem is writer’s fatigue. It’s a condition that makes one dread writing and for me writing should be and has been enjoyable and I hope it will be enjoyable again in the future. It was enjoyable in the past to get paid to cover court cases and whilst keeping true to the facts, still be able to write something relatively entertaining and informative, whether it was about a comical comment from counsel or a judge or some of the pronouncements from the unfortunate residents of the dock.

I started writing here initially about the problems with extremist Islam and its fellow travellers, which I could see have caused and continue to cause immense problems for both Western society and indeed for Islamic societies. The tone I’ve taken about these issues has sometimes been one of despair, horror, astonishment, fear and sometimes, for example when covering such stories as the Islamic ‘chicken shagger’, amusement. I’ve seen some absolute horrors whilst writing about Islam. At one point I was seeing four or five beheadings before breakfast when ISIS was at its height.

What started out as a way of expressing my negative attitude to and documenting the problems caused by Orthodox Islam and the extremism that flows from it like the contents of a burst sewer pipe, has grown into something that I never expected it to become. I’ve written about culture and culture wars, politics, religion, science, debunked conspiracy theories, reviewed books, done court reports, some really bad poetry parodies, a bit of comedy and various sorts of commentary. I have also spoken up in support of the absolute necessity of free speech, not just rights for the speech of the good and the sane but for the right of the bad and the insane to speak as well. This is because it is only by letting such bad and crazy people speak that we can know that they are bad and insane. About the only thing I have not done on this blog is write erotic stories about ‘man meets hot but deluded flat earth bird’ but you never know, there could be a first time.

I’ve had massive fun writing and had exciting times because of it. Writing about what I’ve written about has led me to meet all sorts of exciting people, including some in uniform. The below the line commenters here have nearly always been friendly, erudite and informative and they will always command my affection and respect, even when I may not agree wholly with them.

The Fahrenheit211 blog has garnered well over one million views and although that may not mean much in the big internet realm, where You Tube hits are measured in tens of millions, it’s more than I expected and relatively respectable for what is a mostly text based blog.

I wanted to carry on writing but the writer’s fatigue is crippling me. I need a break. I may revisit this blog in the future or I may decamp to somewhere else on another digital planet so to speak in order to write, but for the moment I need an extended holiday. I’ve realised recently that I’ve done little else with my mind other than write and when I’ve not been writing I have had words tumbling through my head like a Victoria Falls of text, which were gathering in a pool of sentences and paragraphs ready to be committed to the page. There’s been too many words erupting in too many places and at too many inappropriate times.

I’ve reached a similar stage in writing as I reached in photography when that was my job. I ended up in a situation where everything in life, from relationships to work to life itself, was being permanently viewed by myself as if it was on a 24mm x 36mm or 2.25” by 2.25” frame. This attitude and skill is useful when it is useful but it intrusive when it is not required. I had to give up the camerawork I once loved and pursued in a single-minded almost obsessive fashion because viewing the world in such an intensive way ended up burning me out and I became jaded and cynical.

Has writing so intensively and about so many different and often challenging subjects changed me? Yes it has. It’s given me a broader knowledge, enabled me to mostly discern between fact and fiction, although I have been caught out a few times much to my shame, it’s honed my research skills, brought me into contact with people I probably would have never encountered otherwise and even challenged my own views and prejudices.

I’m stopping writing for a while because I want to be able to write in the future. If I carry on writing when it is fatiguing me then I will lose what little talent I have through burnout. What has prompted me to make this decision is a recent visit to a local forest with my young son. Watching his delight in the appearance of the green shoots of spring bothered me because it started to make me think deeply about what delighted me. I used to be delighted by the ability to string words together but lately it has become a bit of a chore. Every morning at 5am I’ve been faced by the tyranny of the blank page and increasingly conscious of how the cruel overseer that is time was pushing me to write, even when I was not writing for sheer delight or to impart what I’ve learned to others. I’m not flouncing because anybody has upset or offended me or because I feel I’ve done something wrong or shameful even though I’ve got some factual things wrong at times, it’s just that I need a break from writing. I like writing but it’s a bit like booze, a good thing but you can have too much of a good thing. This decision is made by nobody but myself, without external pressure.

The Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said that “We must take sides. Neutrality only helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented”. Well I’ve taken a side, I’m still on that side, I may have become more nuanced about how I speak about things, but when I could I used the voice that G-d gave me to speak up for the tormented, especially those tormented by truly appalling ideologies, whether those ideologies be religious or secular.

There is much that I still believe from when I started, some things I have I hope been consistent about. I still believe that patriotism has no skin colour. I still believe that Muslims are often the first victims of Islam. I still despise the jackboot lickers and despite many attempts by others to make me believe, I have never been convinced of the blandishments of conspiracy theorists. Bad things happen, sometimes there are bad people but the vast majority of the world’s problems are down to cock up rather than conspiracy. There is no Illuminati or NWO and intense study has shown me that this is the case. I have at least done my best not to have been overly neutral, even when I’ve been presented with issues where there are indeed two valid arguments held by two different sides, I’ve spoken out, even when it has been difficult to do so.

So what am I going to do now? Well I’m going to do all the things that I didn’t do because I was writing. Well apart from more family stuff, more prayer and a mid life career change, I’m going to read some books, including books that entranced me when I was a child. I’m going to pick up the guitar again and try to play less badly than I did before, I’m going to build another shed and a greenhouse and work on my fitness. I’m going to play around with radio much more including building some antennas and hopefully spend some more downtime chatting away on local 70cm, 2m and 11m nets. There are also skills that I need to have in order to communicate my ideas better such as graphic design and video making and audio production that I want to take time out to learn them and writing so intensely gets in the way of learning such skills. I’d also like to be able to spend more time and effort recycling more of the contents of other people’s skips into useful things for the home. I’m also eagerly eyeing up my camera bag that has been sitting neglected for too long next to my desk. It’s time, after so much time away from making images, to start making them again.

I’ll still be around on Gab and Parler occasionally and I might even pop up there with a photo or two if I think they are good enough.

This is hopefully not the last post here but it is a forewarning of a major slowdown in writing over the next few weeks. I’ll also be doing some background work to give me the ability to put the blog into some form of stasis mode if that is what I end up doing. I will still be around, after all there are flat earthers along with racist and destructive leftists and similar types to help to debunk and to mock. I’m not going to disappear or become a hermit or not engage with people or issues, it’s just that at the moment I don’t need the pressure that I’m under to turn out 500 to 3,000 words per day,which is what I was doing and doing for a very long time.

I want to thank everyone who has made Fahrenheit what it is. I’d like to thank those who dipped into their pockets to support the blog financially and who gave constructive criticism and all the people out there who have read my writings. To everybody who has supported me in so many different ways including by sharing my writings, I thank you all from the bottom of my heart, I am eternally grateful. It’s quite difficult to write this post as this blog has been such a major part of my life and has given me so much and brought me into contact with many wonderful and interesting people and new ideas, some of which I have agreed with but others I have not. But I have to recognise the writer’s fatigue I’m suffering from and take time away from writing so intensively and so often, in order I hope to be able to write in the future.

I don’t know how long I will be away from the keyboard after the slowdown of posts. It could be a few weeks or a month or so or whatever. This is something that I can’t decide for myself about, so I’m going to leave that decision in the hands of the Eternal One.