So Monday will be my first day at the Addison Independent, and this is my last day at the foundation. Well, I guess I should say "was". Because unless the first unexpected phone call of the day (really first? well, Friday of February vacation - entirely possible) is a request for some urgent assistance in the next half hour, there's nothing else to do here. There are times when I have felt guilty about blogging from work, but this will not be one of them.

And on that note, I might stop blogging. Well, I certainly won't close the account and delete the links, but I've updated pretty rarely these days as it is, and even some of that has been out of a sense of obligation. Maybe I'll stop, maybe I'll just change styles and topics, who knows.

But if you'll pardon the management mumbo-jumbo, it's time to re-evaluate my relationship with this. It's just that all the reasons I've done it don't seem to apply any more. (Which is not a bad thing in all cases.) If you look at my daily life, take out the parts that would be uninteresting to anyone but myself, and then take out the parts that I won't talk about in a semi-public forum because they're personal or someone else's business, there's very little left. And as far as the therapeutic benefit of writing one's thoughts out - thankfully, for a number of reasons, my mood has been much better lately than it was, say, two years ago, so I seem to need that much less. The first of those two facts is neutral and the second is a very good thing, but between the two, I have almost no reason to post about my private life.

It's harder to blog, too. Not too hard, obviously, or I wouldn't be able to keep up with the political blogs I read and comment on. But even though my schedule today is only somewhat busier than while in college (a full-time job, clubs in Burlington twice a week and friends occasionally versus classes, the CT and friends I spent a lot of time with), it is much more rigid. I could blog regularly iff I was willing to set aside a half-hour or hour at some point every day, like clockwork... yeah, that's going to happen.

Also, I need it less in the sense of writing practice. Clearly, I will not lack for that while working for a newspaper.

And in writing about politics, I noticed a pattern of saying "I agree with this guy" all too often. That, and the fact that I got bored with working myself into a lather about the scandal of the week. You know the common observation that politicians, pundits and celebrities are out-of-touch, liars, nuts, etc.? Well, the money and the power obviously plays a part, but I think a contributing factor is how they're expected to have an opinion on every damn thing. So much of politics is theater that if there's anything on which a Congresscritter can't expound at length and use to demonize someone or other, they'll get shoved aside in favor of someone who can. I'm not exactly complaining about this, you might as well complain about the tides, but it's not for me. So while I'll probably write and blog about politics when I have an opinion I haven't seen out there yet or when I have some unique expertise on the subject, it just isn't good for my blood pressure or my mood if I do this search after every article or editorial I read that mentions Bush.

So with all that in mind, maybe I'll keep going as I have, but I'll let myself post or not as I feel like it. Or maybe I'll change over to my interests other than politics - comic books, Magic cards, World of Warcraft, all that fun stuff. Or maybe humor - I could use more practice at that and it's been well received the few times I've tried it. I might start blogging about local politics. And of course, maybe my daily life will become worth blogging about again once I'm working at the Addison Independent.