The future of this blog

Well, the near future, anyway.

Based on tracking of my hit count and my referrers, it appears to me I have a small group of regular readers who check in once or twice a week to see what's up. So this is really a heads-up for them.

I've re-entered the world of work. I know, gasp. But as is typical for me, it's not usual work and certainly not 9-5. (A couple of years ago for about six months and quite by coincidence of scheduling I actually worked 9-5 Monday to Friday. It was the first and so far the only time in my life I've done that.)

It's actually two part-time jobs involving - another gasp - educational programs around science and history, respectively. Two-part time jobs with varying schedules that I'm going to have to juggle pretty much week by week. (Well, not exactly; I will be able to plan several weeks in advance but that planning is going to involve that week-to-week juggling act to set up.)

And one other thing: For several believe-it-or-not practical reasons, I just bought a new computer. Which means that I have to spend time installing programs and transferring files.

What's the point of all this "a day in my life" stuff? Blogging may be limited for the next week or so. Don't be surprised if the only thing you see is the Jeopardy! answer/question of the day.

At the same time, I mentioned last month that I was hoping to nudge this thing more toward the idea I had at the beginning, which involved fewer, longer, more in-depth, more analytical pieces than just a string either of "hey-look-at-this"-plus-link posts or long-excerpt-from-some-other-source-plus-"I-agree" posts - the latter two being something of which I think too many blogs are guilty.

I think I've taken some steps in that direction; I'd like to go a little further, so you may see more along those lines in the future. (If any of you remember the print version of "Lotus," imagine this being something more like that.)

In doing this, I've tried not only to provide an outlet for my ideas but to provide, if you will, some kind of service. As part of that, I've tried to post more on topics (or aspects of topics) that were not getting a lot of focus in other lefty blogs, or at least the major ones. That is, I didn't want to talk about the same things everyone else was already talking about. Thus, for example, I spent virtually no space posting about the Democratic primaries; my only two long posts relating to them were about press coverage rather than the primaries themselves.

(I will have something to say about John Kerry, "Anybody But Bush," and other related topics in the near future.)

On the other hand, I think you'd be hard put to find one of those blogs that has paid any attention to Cyprus and few that have devoted as much space to Haiti.

I'm not saying this to blow my own horn, although I admit I'd love to have a good opportunity to do exactly that. It is, rather, to say why I think my small voice has added some value to the overall discussion of who we are as a people and as a political society. (Well, okay, I guess that is blowing my own horn - but you'll have to agree it's kind of a small horn. More like a toot than a blow.)

That's the end of this long, disjointed ramble except to say that I'm egotistical enough to hope to increase my visibility (I intend to place a few cheap ads on other blogs to see how that works) but also humble enough (I'm proud of how humble I am, you know) not only to welcome any feedback but to ask for it. Comment here, comment in email. Hell, those of you who know who I am can comment by phone. But I would like to hear from you.