This blog has become a bit of a no-blogging zone here lately. The whole site has. I’m working on that a bit, but it’s been slow going. My hours aren’t conducive to me getting… well… much of anything done. (I just mowed my yard this week after getting a long-distance call from the guys aboard the International Space Station, asking me to do something about the fact that my grass was tall enough to brush up against their windows when their orbit carried them over Arkansas.) Daddy duty is taking more of my time as little E reaches the age where he wants to explore things, learn more stuff, and have conversations. I love the little conversations we have. It’s the whole reason one’s in the dad business. He cracks me up sometimes, especially when he comes up with some humorous response that’s like something I would say in the same situation. He really is turning into a little me. (I want him to turn out better than that!)
I’m trying to figure out what to do with theLogBook.com. Daily updates, frankly, ain’t gonna happen anymore. It was a valiant try, but at this point I think it’s all about finding clever ways to leverage what’s already on the site. You’ll be seeing quite a few instances of “It aired today X years ago!” stuff soon, as we’re going into the time of year that American TV shows generally premiere – it’s kind of a no-brainer. I wish the forums were generating more activity that I could point to without having to go in and constantly goose it, but I guess this is to be expected when I pretty much fell off the grid for about a week or so (without really planning or preparing to do so, it has to be said). Responsibility for the site going comatose lies solely at my feet.
At the core of the issue is: I have less time to do all the watching / listening / reading that I used to do, to say nothing ofr writing about all the watching / listening / reading that makes up the site. My schedule has really become more about drive-by forum postings (and an awful lot of them are links to other places) when I have the time – perhaps a little too much influence from Facebook, but really much more of a function of my schedule.
I’m open to ideas on how to make it work. I’m not ready to give up yet, even though by any measure that includes common sense, I probably should be.
I had kids a few years before you and Brian, so I always enjoy hearing you guys talk about things that I went through a few years ago. Especially when kid number two came along, I found I simply didn’t have enough hours in the day to do everything I used to do, and had to make some conscious decisions as to where I spent my time. One of the things I cut out was writing reviews, at least on any regular basis. When I looked at the big picture, the two main things I had competing for my time was “creating things”, and “writing about things other people have created”. When I began to look at it like that, the decision became clear.
I still write reviews from time to time, but when I do it’s generally for something I specifically either want to plug or warn people against. For the longest time I was spending an awful lot of time consuming media I didn’t care about for the sole purpose of writing mediocre reviews. I’m not saying your reviews are mediocre, but what I am saying is, if I have the choice between reading reviews you’ve written about other people’s books, or a new book written by YOU, I’d pick the latter. 🙂
Good luck man. It gets easier, eventually.