Just a quick note that effective this week, due to the relatively low number of Monday night events and my weekends becoming increasingly more hectic, the Weekly LOVIEEs will now be posted prior to Tuesday at noon unless there is an event on Monday night worthy of inclusion, in which case they will be posted prior to Monday at noon.

And as always, I thank you, my loyal readers, for your continued loyalty and support. It is appreciated.

As previously mentioned, I’m slowly returning things to the way they used to be, to the form that brought in the relatively high readership levels of October and November. I’ll explain what brought about this sudden change and finally deliver that announcement I promised a couple of weeks ago, but first a little history lesson for the new people.

In 2009 August when I started contemplating this blog and started putting the pieces together in my head and considering the possibilities, I realized this was a rather major undertaking. For a brief time I thought about not doing at all, but I really thought it through and realized even if I wound up abandoning it shortly afterwards, I would wind up a better person for the experience.

Did I draw a certain amount of inspiration from a similar feature and blog? (I’m not naming it here, but you probably know which blog I’m talking about.) Yes, I did, and there’s no sense in denying that. As I’ve said before, there is plenty of room for many different blogs of this type. No two people who do a local events blog (or feature) will do it exactly the same way. Some will be content to just grab a pre-made theme and concentrate on the posts; others will want to do their own custom theme like I did. Some will lean more heavily towards performing arts, such as ballet and dance, others will be heavier on local music, others still on other things, others will try to maintain some balance and variety. Ten people doing similar blogs or features for Houston will do them ten different ways. Nothing wrong with that.

Oddly enough, the feature of the blog that originally inspired me has been mostly discontinued; even more curiously, the discontinuance came right after the wide launch of this blog in early 2009 October. (This may just be mere coincidence.) The author of that blog would just as soon I not have noticed or cared (he/she no doubt completely misread my motives). No matter, my readership numbers were at their peak, and I kept on going because I was actually having fun with this blog.

In the beginning, I suspected I would be more at home on what was then my personal blog (now Rant Roulette) and I considered the possibility I’d be putting this one on hiatus shortly after wide launch because I “just wasn’t feeling it.” But no, by late October I was really enjoying it and my readership continued to grow.

Then the holidays came and the readership levels started declining. I came to a turning point: do I keep trying to get readers again or do I kind of wind it down a bit for a while and not really care? I chose the latter, posting maybe half of what I usually posted for the weekly and monthly LOVIEE and not bothering with any special edition LOVIEEs for the moment.

For a while I felt better. But I thought again, and took my mind back to where I was in August, September, early October of last year. I thought about what it was like to “flip the switch” on this blog for the first time, and I didn’t want to let it go. I decided I’d rather do it right than just do it half-baked. I’m still not back where I want to be with the recaps, but I’ve been going to a lot fewer events lately, for many reasons.

I’m really not sure where everyone went. I’m not going to get into the politics or air any dirty laundry. I’m just going to acknowledge that there are a lot of people who no longer care what I do and would rather me just go away. It’s a rather sad situation. Here’s hoping they come around. But I’ll be honest here, it is easier to just hit the block or ignore button than to try to understand where someone else is coming from.

Anyway, enough of that, about that announcement I was going to make last week.

I’m going to revamp this blog, particularly the design, sometime soon. I had originally hoped to do it before the end of this month but that’s now unlikely as I have work related to the launch of a new company that needs to be done soon. That may turn out to be less urgent than I’m making it but I’d rather have everything together for my company well in advance than throw it together at the last minute. “Last minute” and “thrown together” take on one meaning when I’m scrambling Sunday night to get the weekly LOVIEE together; at worst a few of you guys will be a little miffed if for some reason I’m a bit late. It’s another entirely when we’re talking about a business and income.

Anyway, if you’re as excited as I am about this, a completely new era of Quinn’s Big City, I would look for the new design within the next two weeks. I’m going to try to make it a truly substantial change.

I did, at one time, take this blog a bit too seriously. I don’t know if you, the people out there, either saw or didn’t see that in what I post. Either way, it’s really high time I get back to having fun with it and making a blog I can be proud of and showing how much I really do love and care about Houston.

The truth, as unfortunate as it is, is that I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to keep it going; I want it to be quite some time but of course I don’t really know what the future holds. Whether months, years, or decades, I hope you enjoy it while it lasts. I sincerely believe the best times are yet to come.