Blogging Advisory: Cryogenically Unfrozen

Well. It got a bit dusty in here, didn’t it?

It’s been about five months since I went on sabbatical, and I think – I think – I’m back. I stopped blogging because I was having a crisis of … well, everything; time and confidence and direction and so on. I didn’t have the time and energy to deliver what I wanted, and even if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to deliver it, because I wasn’t sure exactly what it was. I didn’t know what kind of blogger I wanted to be, or what kind of writer, or whether those two could be the same thing. Also, I was getting up at six a.m. and it was making me really tired.

You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve addressed and resolved to my satisfaction precisely none of those issues. I still don’t know what I’m doing with this blog, or what I want to be doing, or how I’d go about doing what I wanted to be doing even if I knew what it was. But the one thing that’s become clear is that I really miss writing about tennis on a daily basis. And now that I’m differently employed again, there’s no reason for me not to do that (apart from all the very good reasons listed above).

Also, I really miss having an excuse to post lots of photos of players.

So I find myself in a strange new world. I put this blog to sleep back in August, when there was still conjecture that JMDP would play the US Open, when Serena was supposed to be back pretty soon, when Murray was allegedly on the brink of winning his first Slam for about the twelfth time. And while New Balls, Please has slumbered peacefully, immune to the winds of chance, the spectacle of Slams and season-ending championships and Davis Cups have flickered fitfully before its unseeing eyes.

And now it rubs the crusty bits from its eyes, adjusts its tangled underwear, and emerges from the rumpled sheets of time to find a bright, shiny new order, where Serena isn’t playing, and Ana Ivanovic is toiling, and Caroline Wozniacki’s consistency is being rewarded, and Gulbis is losing early, and Federer and Nadal are dominating Slams and the WTFs and are all anybody seems to talk about. It’s freaky. We’re through the looking glass here, people.

No, my references haven’t got any less dated.

And with my usual impeccable timing, I’ve chosen to make this grand return right slap bang on the third day of the (so far insanely fun) Australian Open, just to force myself to really hit the ground running.

So let’s see if I still remember how to do this …