Long hiatuses on this blog have never been a rarity. Aside from the entire content makeover, periods of months in which I simply had nothing to write about were normal. I was never stressed about those because they were a choice. I was not inspired to write about certain things, and I did not want to put out content that didn’t speak to me.
This year however, it was bad.
Just a year ago, I put this monster out there.
That is, to this day, my most read post on this site. It got retweeted by other writers, it was also highly regarded in the fandom, and to this day, if you look up “Taemin religious imagery”, it shows up right there as the first result.
It is still sincerely my favorite piece of writing that I have ever written and, while I am very proud of it, it also launched me into a spiral that I am still trying to break out of:
What if I never write anything as good again? Do people expect me to write about nothing but Taemin now? Do people even WANT me to, after I fell face-first into the shawol side of stan Twitter and made some really great friends but also got blocked by many, many people? Do I delete the entire blog, pretend I was never a writer to begin with, and go back to stan Twitter to become the hag stan I was always meant to be, full time?
It has been bad. All of this, plus some bad, really bad, really not good personal changes made the idea of writing all the more difficult and all-consuming. But I thought that I would always have K-dramas to go back to. K-dramas were the safety net, right?
Well, no.
Turns out when your head isn’t in the right place, even the things that make you happy and inspire you lose meaning. And that happened with K-dramas to me. I started well over a dozen K-dramas in 2021 only to find myself uninterested or quitting even the ones that I started liking early (I promise I will get back to you one day, Run On).
So I didn’t watch K-dramas either. For almost a year, and that’s when I realized that I didn’t have anything to write about.
Until Vincenzo came along.
I will not say Vincenzo is the best K-drama of all time. To be quite honest, I did not even enjoy it as much as most people did. But for the first time in a very long time I was engaged and binge-watching a show. I was laughing, I was crying, I was sincerely charmed by the characters and loving what I am pretty sure is Song Joong Ki’s best performance to date. But by the time I finished it, everyone else had already gotten over it and so I had nothing to write about. Again.
Then Squid Game happened. Finally, a true, proper global K-drama phenomenon! I had to see writers that have never, once in their lives, watched a single Korean drama before, write thinkpieces about them and about the Korean drama industry that made my blood boil and suddenly become “experts”. Because it is a niche topic and people will eat up five thousand posts of recommendations that do not go beyond what is on the “Recommended for You” tab of Netflix. But I couldn’t even be mad about them writing those things because I have lost an entire year of potential opportunities to write about something that I am knowledgeable of, because my brain is not cooperating.
If by accident you got here, you may be wondering “Why is she telling me all of this? I didn’t ask.” I wanted to explain my absence to the people who subscribed with the expectation of more writing from me. But mostly I wanted to put out some words out there, just to make sure that I still can. I will come back, eventually. And to be honest, I will probably write about Taemin again because holy shit, guys, Advice was so good and I do have opinions about it. And I am ready for people to either love them or hate them. Or just be indifferent about them. I am not that important anyway.
And because I do not want to end this post without a positive note, I just finished Hello, Me!, where a 37-year old woman meets her 17-year old self and re-learns how to be the best version of herself. While I truly do not want to go back to my teens, I do sincerely want to be the person that I was when I could write, and I will do my best to bring her back little by little.
See you soon. I hope.
Taylah Talks 
Heyy! Firstly, I wanna tell you something: even if you feel like the hype of a particular something has died down, and you can’t write anything about it that would be surprising or new – you’re wrong. Because I’m sure what you will have to offer is a completely new perspective. Surely your opinion would be different and your blog is a space for you to just write about your thoughts. And honestly I would, and many others would love to hear ur thoughts about a show even if aired a decade ago. I JUST started watching k-dramas and that also, crash landing. The hype has long since died down, and I had the same thoughts as you: who would care? But then I went ahead and just wrote about. Sure, my view count has gone down because I also have been MIA but writing about my feelings and thoughts felt so good!