The end is coming…and HELL’S COMING WITH IT.

Apologies, readers and other friends of Burbanked. I haven’t been around these parts much lately. Let me explain why.

Several months ago, my boss and I had a discussion about the company, the economy, and the overall outlook for the future. The bottom line was that my position was going to be eliminated. I’ve been given the time to look for a new job, and I’ve been doing exactly that, every single night, ever since. In the meantime, Burbanked has been unhappily left behind to crumble down all around us.

Burbanked has always been my fun site. My movie-and-writing treat that I allowed myself at the end of the day. My interaction with you, the delightfully engaging, smart and oddball movie blogging audience, has always been what motivated me to write here, much more so than the traffic or the stats or any of that other silly stuff. I love to write; I love movies. Burbanked has been my dream marriage of those two worlds.

But I’ve been in crisis mode literally from the very day that I learned my job was going away. I’ve got four mouths to feed back at home; medical benefits to support; prescriptions to keep going and a roof to keep in place. When it becomes a question of risking any of that or allowing myself to have some fun writing a blog, it’s pretty obvious what the only choice is.

So I’ve been absent here, and I don’t think it’s going to let up soon. I will certainly find a new job and the end of the world will not come. Hell, Michael Bay’s movie is about to open and that will do a truckload more damage to our collective souls than my little career crisis could ever hope to do. But I’ve already moved far away from Burbanked in my mind; it’s been a necessary wound that I’ve had to mentally plug and get on with business so that I didn’t let it occur to me how damn much I missed writing here. And how much I miss reading and responding to your comments and visiting your blogs and all of that.

I’m not certain that I’ll make it back here. That’s just the honest truth. I want to keep Burbanked going and I’ve been tempted to post on so very, very many topics over the last few months. But I’ve already started plans to revamp my other site alanlopuszynski.com to function as a more marketing- copywriting- SEO- social media-oriented blog, one which would more closely reflect my career capabilities and expertise.

So here’s what my plan is:

• I’m going to finish work on relaunching alanlopuszynski.com. If you’re a marketing or online or social media or advertising person, I’d invite you to stop by there and see how it evolves.
• I’m going to strip down Burbanked to its basics: stories and sidebar. That way I’ll still be able to post little bits and pieces when I can, some of them short and sweet and maybe some of them longer pieces, once my life settles down again.
• My marketing blog will likely still have some crossovers into movie marketing stories. When that happens, I’ll post them here as well just for kicks.
• If I’ve been a regular reader of your site, know that I’m still reading it. I might not comment as often and when I do you’ll probably start seeing more “Alan Lopuszynski” than “Burbanked” as my signature.

Thanks again for reading and engaging with me here; it’s been a fantastic, transformative experience for me, and a damn great education along the way.

Desperate to keep in touch with me as I travel this rocky, uneven road? By all means feel free to get a hold of me thusly:

• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Follow me on Twitter
• Become my friend on Facebook
• Email lucrative job offers and sure-thing money-making deals to alan[at]alanlopuszynski.com

Now go see more movies in the theater!

By the way: that picture at the top of this post is a fairly current image of my high school! I came across it online recently – absolutely, completely by random chance – and thought that it was a very nifty visual metaphor for how things were looking around Burbanked lately.