I’ve tried the blogging thing on and off for seven years. I’ve never been one to frequently update like some of writers I admire today. But I’ve tried to read more and share some of the things I’ve enjoyed. Somehow, though, the little posting I do — on here and my social networks — is taking too much of my time.

So it’s come to this: A break.

I don’t know how long my break from the online world will be but what little readers I have will probably notice some silence in this space. I’m not shutting down anything or closing things off. And if I do find some spare time to engage people outside of my immediate IRL world, you can still find those updates at the same usual places.

But for now, I’m turning off my Tumblr syndication (I never really liked how it worked anyway). I’ve already stopped posting pictures to Instagram and Flickr. I won’t be retweeting much if at all. And, somewhat sadly, I won’t be writing here for a while.

But I hope to be back one day.

Yet, we all know what ‘a break’ means in the dating world. You use a break to cool off a heated romance that hasn’t quite worked out as well as it should to grow in a healthy way. But what always happens is that the people involved realize its never going to work out and it’s better off leaving the break permanent. I don’t want it to be like that but I wouldn’t be surprised if, pardon the pun, it came to it.

So I’m shutting down my laptop and taking a break from the online world for a while. I’m going to leave unfinished a research post I’ve been doing on ‘free’ as a business model. But I’ll leave things open enough for a chance to write some more. And, like I sometimes do with the show that inspired the blog’s name, I’ll break off with a quote from The Simpsons:

“Smell you later.”