Saturday, March 10, 2007

The Future of My Blog

It's been 6 weeks now since I started a "real job" outside my home. I knew this meant an end to very much blogging during the week but I had no idea how close it would come to a total end of my blog. Originally I planned to get up and do a blog post in the early morning or do most of my blogging in the evening when I got home. That hasn't materialized, aside from the birthday and other tribute posts which don't require any of my own personal writing or thinking skills.

One victim has been my political posts. I barely have time to read the paper. And in all honesty, I'm going through a period of total burnout with the Iraq war situation. I'm not disengaged and I haven't stopped caring; but I just cannot get myself into a position where I want to write anything about it. Plenty of other bloggers do a fine job of that anyway.

Frankly, I'm sick of seeing, hearing and reading about Bush, Cheney, war, Libby, torture, lies and the fucking liars who tell them. The entire situation makes me want to puke so why the hell would I write about it? Politically, the only thing that excites me is 2008, and perhaps the last couple of months of 2007 leading up to the initial primaries. Like most of you, I am desperate for a radical change. And I use the word radical rather loosely here since it wouldn't take a hell of a lot to produce a radical change at this point.

Having said all of that, I have no idea what direction or focus I intend to pursue with my blog. There were several days when I seriously wanted to throw in the towel. And then something would happen to make me realize how much I love doing this. So I will continue, and in the meantime I'm going to ponder my focus, or the theme with which I want this blog to carry, not that I really need one.

Heavy posts will appear from time to time, some political in nature, but I can no longer stress about the fact that I can't do serious hard-hitting posts on a consistent basis.

This has been a strange and difficult year for me already. The year was barely 24 hours old when I came to the stark realization that my business was a mess, the debt was nearly impossible to manage due to lack of clients or clients in arrears with payments, and that hasn't changed. I still need to deal with that soon.

We were discussing the possibility of selling our house, packing up and moving to Arkansas. In fact, that much had been decided. My goal was to purchase a very inexpensive fixer-upper, pay cash for it if possible to avoid any monthly mortgage payments, and then use the profits from the sale of this house to erase our debt. I wanted to be in a debt-free situation and know that I could get by on a minimal income if necessary.

Then, very unexpectedly, I received a tip about a freelance position for which I was highly qualified, and which paid quite well. Clearly I would have been a fool to turn it down, but this did turn my life upside down yet again.

The first three weeks were absolute hell as I attempted to adapt to a vastly different work environment outside my home, not to mention the commute which has since become the most relaxing portion of my day thanks to convenient, cheap, and fast public transit. Then suddenly I began to make an adjustment at work. Rather than questioning myself for getting into this, I began to enjoy it, and by the end of the 4th week, I was truly loving it.

During this time, txrad also interviewed for a position with the same company and was hired. His first day on the job is Monday. During the past 6 weeks I've been relying quite heavily on him for everything during the workday which needed to be done, whether it was wrapping up loose ends with our business, shopping for groceries, or dealing with the banking. Obviously, that luxury is about to disappear and we're in for another period of adjustment.

When we lived in Los Angeles, we both worked for the same advertising agency for about 6 or 7 years. Life seemed so simple then. And the future seemed much more clear.

I'll get through it. We'll get through it. And the blog will continue.

No comments: