Well folks, as I trudged home through the icy darkness last night, I had a revelation about my future and the future of this very website that you are reading.

Two things are happening right now, the first is that we are getting very close to one thousand posts, that is to say 1,000 actual posts with real content (some of it quite exhaustive) and not just a yuk-yuk joke or a cat picture. That’s a hell of a lot of material and it’s hard for me to believe I’ve written one million words about this funny, quirky country where I live!

The second thing that’s happening is that I am busy at work with Project Iceberg. I’ve been discussing it (offline) with a few select people here and I can see now that this is my most ambitious collaborate project ever. It’s either going to be an enormous success or an enormous failure but it’s definitely going to be huge.

Some Romanians are going to be fucking pissed off by it as it is deliberately designed to challenge several of the prevailing tropes in this country which I find useless, antiquated and stupid. So yeah, something is going to happen for sure LOL.

I suspect that by mid-January into February (approximately), Project Iceberg is going to consume most of my free time, even more so than it does now. I loved my book launch two weeks ago and I had a wonderful time there (and book sales seem to be doing great) but honestly the whole thing was hastily organized, poorly advertised and far too ad hoc. Again, I’m not complaining because it went off wonderfully but I need Project Iceberg to be done right, which means doing all the prep work now before trying to launch this rocket on all cylinders.

So what’s the connection between Project Iceberg and this website having almost 1000 posts? Well it means that I think we’re coming to the end here on what this site was set out to do. Time and time again I go to write something and realize that I’ve already said it at least once and sometimes up to half a dozen times. I’ve never had “writer’s block” in my entire life but I am approaching the point where I’ve already made every minute observation about Romanian culture and society that I am capable of making.

The summary version of what I’m saying is that in the next few months it’ll be time for me to move onto other projects full-time and no longer actively write on this blog here. There are definitely a few more things I do need to write here first though, including a lengthy history of World War 1 and how Romania got to be the country it is today, but then we’re going to wrap it up.

I then need to clean up a few old broken links, add in some other useful stuff (such as a blogroll), make it easier to find posts by topic and subject but then that’s going to be the end. Oh yeah plus I need better-designed and easier to navigate links to all of my books, etcetera.

I’m not going to take down the website or put it offline – it will stay here in cyberspace, free to read for everyone and completely free of advertisements, just like it’s always been. I’ve seen how it is for bloggers who make money (with ads) and it’s a grueling kind of work and not the kind of thing I want to do.

This website is my gift to people and also my internet home where everyone can find me and navigate their way to all of the things I do (and contact me) and I’ve had a ton of fun writing everything here. It’s all honest, it’s all true and it’s all real and I love it for that.

So… for the next couple of months, not much will change around here. But then about the time when Project Iceberg is ready to share with the world I will switch over to working on that full-time and then other things I am currently developing. And this website will convert from a more active blog to a kind of fun museum where people who are interested in all things Romania can come and visit and stay a while and have a laugh or learn something cool and interesting.

And of course Yours Truly, the author of every last word you’ve ever read here, will still be around in Romania and somewhere on the internets, busy kicking ass as is my wont and usual custom :)

* – The title of this post is an allusion to a baseball term, especially definitions 2 and 3.