All change – Whats new for 2020

Happy New Year all!

Some of you may have noticed things go a little quiet towards the end of last year. Truth be told, I was a little stretched and had to hold fire from writing on here for a bit. As much as I love writing this blog, I have to juggle it in with other things and sometimes I can’t quite do it all.

For those of you who don’t know me so well, when I started writing Under the Ginfluence, I was working part time and studying a BA in English and Creative Writing. In the nearly 5 years (April time) I’ve been doing this, I’ve been slowly building my reputation in the industry and it’s leading to wonderful things. Nowadays I’m a self employed writer and spirits judge, as well as working full time and studying for an MA in Creative Writing. It’s a little more than before and sometimes it’s hard to squeeze it all in, especially with more deadlines to juggle.

So firstly, thank you for your patience.

Secondly, it’s got me thinking. I need to change things up a bit. The first step is to drop back down to part time at work. Luckily for me, I work in a University and they’re fantastic for supporting you whilst you do other things too. As of early Feb I’ll be dropping back down to 3 days a week, which means Mon-Weds I’m at work, Thurs-Fri will be my self employed office hours. Just to be at the point where I have official hours is a brilliant thing and something that seemed a world away when I first started. I have a small room in my house that I use as a study. More often than not it’s full of boxes and anything I don’t know what to do with gets chucked in and the door closed. Last weekend I cleared it out and I’ve ordered a few extra bits to transform it into a proper office. I’ve ordered a large corkboard for keeping organised, some filing trays and a shelf to put my plants on. After some organising, my desk actually looks like a desk. I’ve got a bookcase in there already that’s full of nonsense so I’ll be clearing that off to home all of the gin bottles I’ve been collecting around my house the last few years. I’ll have a real Ginfluence HQ. It’s all very exciting.

Secondly, I think I’m going to open my blog up to a little more. So far it’s really been just focused on the gin and just to assure you, the gin will still be the prominent feature, it’s Under the Ginfluence after all. However, I’m finding it tricky to keep up with reviews. Although I’ll have more time for reviews and I’ll certainly be keeping it updated with all sorts of gin related stuff, going forward, I’m going to loosely broaden the content. I’m going to be writing a little more on the judging, on the experiences travelling to events and maybe a little more on my life as a gin person too. This is for me as much as for you. I’ve found that having a few gins in the queue can really block up my ability to write anything at all, and I think having the option to write about more stuff would mean I write more in general. Don’t worry, I’m going to organise the categories so you can click a button and get all the gin reviews and nothing else, if that’s what you’re really into.

I’ll be starting this with a travel diary of my trip to San Francisco for the ADI Judging of Craft Spirits in February. I did have a bash at travel writing when I went last year and there was a great response to it, so much so that I made the joke that perhaps I’d gone into the wrong business. So, fingers crossed I can keep it as interesting this time too!

And with that, here’s my first post of this year, and my first post on here for some time. Boy, that sure feels good.

Thanks for all your support, here’s to a broader horizon in 2020, hopefully even brighter too.