(December 2023. Interlude and blogiversary.)

I haven’t posted here in over a month. I’m pausing my hiatus today because it was five years ago today, December 9, 2018, that I posted the first episode of Don’t Let The Days Go By. In the fictional universe, it was July 5, 1993, character-Greg had one year of high school left. The Dennisons had been visiting extended family, and on the 250-mile road trip home, they drove around every university campus on the way so that Greg could see the schools up close and get ideas about where to apply. Now, after five years and 180 episodes, Greg has graduated from the University of Jeromeville, and he has a plan for the next step.

This hiatus has been planned. I always take some time off every six months in the fictional timeline. I have a feeling that this hiatus is going to be longer, though. I even considered not coming back at all and just ending the story here. Graduation would make a good stopping point to the story, and in the last few months, writing was feeling more like a chore than something I enjoyed. And I’ve just been dealing with a lot of lack of motivation issues in general.

I wonder sometimes why I’m still keeping this story going. Very few people actually read it. I wonder, does anyone really care what happens? Does anyone get involved in the characters’ lives, anxiously wondering what will happen in the next episode, as one might for the characters in a popular TV series? At the same time, though, I’ve never been doing this for popularity. I guess my main purpose in writing DLTDGB is to keep these memories alive. The world has changed a lot in the last quarter-century, and while it’s not healthy to live in the past, there is a lot of nostalgia that is quickly disappearing that I want to preserve in my own specific way. And it has also been helpful to look back on my actual memories from those days and reflect on how I have grown since then.

As of now, I’m still planning on sticking with the original plan, to keep going up until January 1, 2000 in the fictional timeline, then possibly having a few more episodes, skipping more quickly through 2000 and 2001, to tie up loose ends and tell the story of how Greg moved away from Jeromeville.

If you are new here, welcome; it’s nice to meet you. Don’t Let The Days Go By is a continuing episodic coming-of-age story set in the 1990s, about a student at the fictitious University of Jeromeville, in the western United States. Start here at episode 1, and then keep clicking “next” to read the whole story in order:
(click) July 5, 1993. Prologue: my first visit to Jeromeville. (#1)

I wanted to do some other non-DLTDGB writing during this hiatus, but that hasn’t happened yet. I have an unfinished story that I started in October, and another unfinished story that I started in the spring of 2022. Those might still get done eventually, but in general, I’m trying to juggle a lot of things in life right now, and I feel like I’m spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere. I might need to step back from some things so that things that are supposed to be fun don’t start to feel like chores or obligations.

If I do finish those other stories, they’ll probably be on my other blog, where I post very occasionally, so go subscribe: (click) gregoutofcharacter.wordpress.com

How are all my readers, the few of you who are still around, doing? Let me know what’s going on in your lives. And feel free to ask me questions about DLTDGB and the fictional Jeromeville universe too; I’ll answer them to the best of my ability without giving away spoilers. And for those of you who don’t want to read all 180 episodes, you can click here for the year 1 recap, year 2 recap, and year 3 recap. I’ll be posting the year 4 recap soon, and updating some other things on the site.