Long-time visitors to The Spicy Cauldron will notice I’ve done more than have a summer refresh: I’ve gone for a complete reboot. This means I’ve hidden away all the old content in the website database, marking over 2,500 poems and opinion pieces as private for my eyes only. Why? So I can start afresh and still go back to read my thoughts and poems from yesteryear whenever I want.

Sometimes we get bogged down by the weight of our personal histories, the past in general and the expectations of others. Such was the way for me with The Spicy Cauldron and it took me months, probably much longer than a year, to realise just what it was that made me no longer love blogging. It wasn’t the rise of social networking. 140-character updates on Twitter and status updates on Facebook have their place alongside the blogosphere. Neither they nor the new young upstart Google+ are replacements for blogging.

I hated so many thoughts and feelings and perspectives going back as far as August 2004 being on public show. That was it. It was my own accumulated content that had dragged me down and made me lose my enthusiasm and momentum. I’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater, I know. In nearly seven years of operation this site has been linked to and indexed left, right and centre. I don’t care. The very imagining of all those links made me feel like a fly stuck in a web—and indeed, I was. It’s called the World Wide Web and sometimes it can be overwhelmingly suffocating, especially if you’ve been blogging as long as I have and using the Internet since 1995.

What I want is a blog that reflects who I am today, is fresh and relevant (hopefully) and takes me forward into the unknown rather than forcing me to be aware of everything that went before. A blog that doesn’t take itself quite as seriously all the time as it once did. A blog with new clothes on. A blog that can make you laugh sometimes as well as think. A blog that has only two categories of content now: Creative Writing and Everything Else.

This is that regenerated-like-a-Time-Lord blog. You’re reading The Spicy Cauldron. It’s like before, only different. You’ll note there is still an archive section. I’ll populate this over time with some carefully selected ‘best of’ content from before today’s grand demolition and rebuild job. If there’s something you really lament no longer being publicly available, get in touch here or on Twitter (@coileach) and I’ll see what I can do to make you all happy and smiley again.

Enjoy and blessed be.