My ongoing handling of the site issues that I mentioned in my last two posts is going well so far, and I’m about halfway finished. However, during this past week as I’ve been handling those issues, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about just how much I want to or DON’T want to continue doing my One SNL A Day project, especially with some big changes in my life coming up very soon. You see, truth be told, ever since some point in my coverage of season 41, I officially reached the point where the fun of doing this project had completely left me and never came back. It has nothing to do with the quality of the episodes I covered at the time (which were generally good) – I just naturally reached the official state of burnout after the grind of doing this project for so long. Not even the occasional days off that I allowed myself to take from this project for relaxation these past few seasons have done anything to help the complete burnout that hit me. Even with that burnout, I didn’t give up on this project, because 1) I didn’t want to disappoint my readers, knowing how much they enjoy my reviews, and 2) I was pretty close to the official finish line of completing this project, with (as of now) slightly less than four seasons remaining.
Despite the burden of having to manage the aforementioned site issues this past week, the break that it’s given me from doing reviews has been absolutely refreshing. And not refreshing in a “This hiatus is starting to bring back my enthusiasm for doing reviews again” way, but in a “I don’t ever want to go back to the grind of doing reviews” way. And after doing A LOT of thinking about it these last few days, I’ve come to the very difficult decision that I’m going to end this project right now. I just have absolutely no enthusiasm left for doing any more reviews, not even for the slightly-less-than-four remaining seasons of this project. Hell, I don’t even have any enthusiasm left for completing the remainder of the season I recently started (season 43). I just can’t. Even the mere thought of going back to doing reviews makes me groan. And, as I alluded to earlier in this post, there are some big changes coming very soon in my life (not bad ones) that are going to make it even more of a strain on me to do these reviews, plus, schedule-wise, those changes are going to make it pretty much impossible for me to continue these reviews anyway. I know some people might suggest something like, “You can just do a review once every few weeks or so, if it’ll get you through the rest of this project” or “Take a break for a few months, then come back to this project”, which aren’t bad suggestions at all, but, for various reasons (including the upcoming changes in my life), just isn’t something I’m going to do. Trust me, I’ve thought long and hard about every possible scenario, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m ready to wrap this project up now.
I deeply apologize to all of my readers for this announcement. Please know that you were always on my mind during the long process of me making this decision, which is why this decision was so painful for me to make. While I find it very important for me to look out for you readers, it’s also very important for me to look out for myself, and the decision I’ve made is what I feel is for the best. One SNL A Day began as a passion project of mine, and when all of the passion of it has completely left me, why force myself to continue?
My review for what was supposed to be the next episode in my project, the Larry David episode from season 43, was already written before I had to put this project on a hiatus a week ago to handle my site issues. I wasn’t able to post that review back then because I couldn’t upload the screencaps for it, due to my site running out of disk space. Since I’ve now freed up a decent amount of disk space so far, I can now post that review. It will be my final review for this project, and I’ll post it tomorrow. After all, I owe it to you readers to give you one last review, not only for your wonderful devotion to this site, but for the great patience you’ve shown while I was handling my site issues this past week. In addition to that, the final segment in that Larry David episode is a great Beck Bennett/Kyle Mooney pre-tape that I absolutely love, and I would be proud to have that as the final segment I review in this project. After I post that episode review, I’ll be doing a big, special farewell post that will officially wrap up this project.
Despite how disappointing it is that I’m ending my project before completion, I’m still very proud of how far I’ve made it. In under three years, I’ve covered slightly over 42 seasons of the show, I’ve made it well into SNL’s modern era, and the season that I’m currently in was the most recent season back when I first launched this project in 2018. I have a lot to be happy about in regards to what I’ve accomplished in this project.