Without really thinking about it, our 10 year blogoversary came and went. This blog has been sputtering along since January 6th, 2007. A decade of blogging is a lot for anyone, and I am getting tired. At some point, I probably will stop, but I’m not there yet. Obviously my posting frequency has dropped a good bit, but I’m not ready to completely throw in the towel.
A lot of that is really more lack of time than lack of interest. How many of you feel like you’re working harder today than you were a decade ago? A lot, I suspect. Maybe it’s easier when we’re younger. I was 32 when I started what was then Snowflakes In Hell, and didn’t fit the stereotypes of gun owners: the middle-aged fat white guy. A decade later at 42, I look a lot more like the stereotype than I really care to.
When I think back to what the blogging community was like in 2007 versus what blogging is all about today, it’s a night and day difference. When I started, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting a new blog. Now bloggers who don’t blog for a living are almost extinct. The traditional blog look and feel has given away to the E-zine model (is e-zine even a word anymore?). If you’re not a Google News source, you might as well not exist.
When I started this blog, Facebook had only been open to non-college students for a few months. Twitter also had only been launched a few months before, and no one had really heard of it. Social Media was not a thing, and blogging was a place people went to share and discuss ideas. It was a means to route around the traditional media. Back then, it was even a way to keep the issue ahead of the NRA, who in the days before they had any real social media presence, was usually late to the debates of the day. Today is about as likely I find out about breaking news from NRA’s online presence as I do other sources.
It’s been a hell of a journey. I never would have imagined the people I would get to know through blogging. I hope, over the last decade, I’ve had some kind of positive impact on this issue. I’d like to think what I’ve done here has mattered. As we enter our second decade of publication, I still can’t believe there are people who stop by on a regular basis to read the reams shit that go through my brain and out my fingers! For those that do, a hearty thank you.
You have. It has. You’re welcome.
And I have been reading this blog since April 2007; after the Virginia Tech shooting.
Thanks! Feels like all that happened just yesterday, but it’s been a decade.
Happy Anniversary. I know you have helped me to expand my knowledge and helped spur my activism.
hey dude, you need to post more often I read you when I’m at the capitol and your new stuff is always a highlight of my day
Thanks! I do my best. The hard part isn’t posting so much as following the issue closely enough to have something to say. And lately, when I’m in my office office (as opposed to my home office) I’m busy the whole time I’m there, and when I’m there I lose two hours of that day on the commute. That’s why my not posting often coincides with Tuesdays and Fridays, which are my in-office days. And that’s not counting the days I’m on site at clients (which isn’t that often, but that’s often a busy day too).
Wow. It’s been a while.
If you shut down the blog, it will be sorely missed.
I’m just thinking out loud here, but. . .
I have never blogged, per se, and never wanted to. Less so, today, than ever. I don’t mind commenting semi-anonymously, like this, about what I’m thinking for the moment, but I do not want to commit my transient thoughts — and all thoughts will prove transient — to the most unforgiving ether in human history.
It was relatively recently that the meaning of Bob Dylan’s lyric, “I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now” sank in for me: The older you get the less certain about everything you become; exactly the opposite of what we are led to expect.
I never blogged but I’ve had a number of things published in hard copy print in years past; some I actually got paid for (nominally) and some were syndicated. Some have been on websites, which I suppose might qualify them as “blogs,” though I submitted them more according to the old print model, as if submitting a manuscript to a magazine.
Probably the majority of what I said at those times I wish I could retrieve and have it forgotten. I regret many things I contributed to and most of the people I fellow-traveled with at those times.
There is alleged to be an old Pennsylvania Dutch saying, “You get too soon olt and too late schmart.” But there is never a time in your life — at least when you’re young — when you aren’t convinced you are schmart.
So those are my reservations about blogging; what you commit to the ether at, say, 32, will not be forgotten when you’re, 42, 52. . .82, dead. And when inevitably you reverse yourself on some very important things, someone will always be reminding you of what you once said, and you will be forever explaining your mind-changes, which usually cannot be explained in short stories involving only a few factors.
One final reservation, as expressed in Nock’s essay, “Isaiah’a Job”: anyone who becomes dependent on an audience, either financially or psychologically, becomes owned by their audience; their audience leads them, they do not lead their audience. Any mind-change that might be regarded as apostasy will lose most of the audience, so must be kept to ones self; at which point the remainder of what the writer/artist/creator expresses becomes dishonest.
Congratulations, thank you, yes you have helped. Your viewpoints and perspectives (and some of your links) have informed many besides those that read your blog.
Again, thank you
I’ve been blessed by your blog!
– Arnie
Congrats! We’re all a little more rotund than we were in our 30’s, and life seems to get in the way as we continue to grow older. Thank you for your dedication to the cause, and thank you all for keeping it interesting!
It really hit me one time when I saw a photo of a crowd with me in it, and I asked Bitter “Who is that old dude you’re standing next to?” Oh shit! That’s me!
I came across a picture of me from a Harrisburg rally years ago, taken by a mutual friend. I had hair, and I was wearing pants with a 32″ waist! The good old days…
As an aside, I believe that mutual friend and photo led me to your blog!
I think your lower posting frequency is part of what keeps your blog as one of my few must reads. Many other blogs languish in Feedly and I’ll occasionally check in. Yours, I read as soon as I see a new post. If it’s important enough for your limited posting time, it’s important enough for my limited reading time.
It’ll be a sad day if you hang it up, staying reasonably informed on gun policy issues will take a lot more effort on my part. Thanks for everything you’ve done for the issue so far.
Thanks! I’ve consciously chosen not to do meaningless filler. A lot of blogs write good posts every once in a while, but when there’s no news you get filler. Some sources I stopped reading because finding the gems in the rough takes too much time. When there’s not much interesting news, I post less often.
Keep fighting the good fight, Sebastian.
I can’t remember when I first stumbled across this blog. Certainly at least a year before Sandy Hook, and I might even have seen the old “Snowflakes in Hell” moniker. But these last six years have been a blessing. I don’t check in as often as I used to, but I always appreciate the wisdom. Yeah, I’m calling it wisdom. Just about half of everything I know about politics and firearms came from this blog.