|
What happened to Geodog?
First of all, thank you everybody for the nice emails inquiring if I was OK, and inquiring as to what was going on. I was surprised and touched that so many people who I only knew online were concerned enough to write, and I apologize for not writing back to everybody. Thanks for your concern and support.
I took a break from blogging at the end of the summer, and said that I would be back after Labor Day, fully intending to do so, but I haven't publicly blogged a word since. So what happened? A bunch of stuff all at the same time. The first thing that happened is that I got really busy. With the start of school for my child and his mother the teacher, I had a lot more responsibility for taking care of our child, and I couldn't stay up late at night blogging without paying (or unfairly making my kid pay) a much bigger price. Also, I decided that it was time to get very serious about job hunting, and to put the hours into contacting old colleagues, scanning job listings and crafting individual cover letters and sending in resumes. I just didn't see where the time to blog would come from, other than sleep, which usually makes me grumpy.
One day I did I fire up Userland's Radio to use the RSS reader, but then it crashed and screwed up my data yet again. That, plus reading yet another attack on someone by Dave Winer, was the last straw for me and Radio. At that point I decided that I had finally had it with Radio's crashes and its megalomaniacal developer, and that I would switch over to Movable Type, where I have had a very stable and pleasant family blog for months. But doing so was a half day project that I never found the time to do.
Another thing that happened was that somebody whose opinion means a lot to me saw my blog for the first time, and reacted negatively and harshly, asking me why I was spending so much time documenting the opinions and the reporting of others, instead of trying to a make a difference myself. I responded defensively, but after thinking it over a bit decided that he had a bit of a point, and resolved to spend more time trying to actually effect change, and less time reporting on the idiocies of the Bush administration. To that end I spent lots of time before the recent election writing congress critters, contacting people I know personally to convince them to do the same, and encouraging people to vote for the right people in the 2002 elections. The end result? Disappointing, to say the least.
It is funny -- something in my upbringing as the son of a player in the political arena convinced me that political action is the way to effect positive change, and that being very well informed is crucial to being able to effect change. However, I've come to the conclusion that the evidence doesn't support this belief, or at most that it is a necessary but not sufficient condition. I've found that knowing all the idiotic, selfish and scary things that are going on doesn't make me happier or more effective -- it just creates a sense of powerlessness. So I have been trying to avoid wallowing in the news, and avoiding blogging.
|
|
