I'm Still Here

At one point, I updated this blog every single day -- no matter what. If I was going to be away from a computer, I cued things up to post -- there had to be a post date-stamped every one of those days, or else!

Or else what?

I don't have a good answer to that question, and it is a good question.

Lately, when I read other blogs, I find myself getting more and more annoyed with "guest bloggers." I'm not reading Blogger X to get the thoughts of someone else, I want Blogger X. And, being a demanding little Netizen, I want Blogger X for real, and not just a drive-by post, clearly designed to show that Blogger X is still around and cognizant of his web audience

For example, I read the blogs of both Neil Gaiman and Charles Stross. (And I bet most of my readers read both of them as well.) Stross is currently away from his own blog, but he has two fill-in bloggers diligently ladling in content -- and I find that I'm not reading a word of it, primarily because it's not Charlie. Gaiman, on the other hand, doesn't write classical blog posts -- little essays, with an clear argument and through-line, the way Stross does very well -- but just meanders about, in a free-form journal style, when he does have time to post. But Gaiman has the great virtue of never turning over his web presence to anyone else, except very briefly and informatively. So I find each of Stross's real posts more satisfying, but a Gaiman post is more special. And I read all of Gaiman's posts, while I skim or pass by the guest-written Stross posts often.

It took a while, but eventually I connected my own dots: I thought I had to post every day, but I was annoyed by bloggers who posted just to post. So I was annoying myself. (That, as anyone who knows me will realize, is nothing new -- I'm annoyed by so much in this world I can't help but be pissed off at myself at least once a day.)

I'd like to post something substantial every day, but I don't always have the time -- especially in summer, when my kids are up late, and it's too hot for sustained sitting and thinking down in my bloggy basement. So I've quietly decided -- without actually saying so in public, until now -- that it's OK to skip days. (And I suspect the people who actually care about a blog are reading it via feed or some other aggregator anyway -- so they'll see it whenever it does update.)

So this all is just to say -- I do a lot of long-winded posts "just to say" things, don't I?; I'll have to work on that -- that Antick Musings may be skipping days more than it was formerly wont to do, but that's in the aim of focusing on the topics we all really care more about anyway. (Namely, books, publishing, and a smattering of movies and random other stuff.)

My hope is that, once summer is over and it cools down -- or if it ever gets less crazy and hectic at work -- I'll have more time, and more free mental cycles, for blogging, and post frequency will go back up. But it's been crazy and hectic at work for a good year now, so that may not be the most likely hope. And the fall is busy for family life in its own way -- my boys are now in 8th and 5th grades, with more and more homework that requires my help/input/opinion.

So who knows what will happen? I'll keep blogging, about SF and comics and movies and books and publishing and the stupidities of the world and the stupid rapacity of consultants and whatever else comes to mind. And I'll do it as much as I can, as best as I can.

Who can promise to do more than that?