I feel like I’m quite lucky that this blog is just a side gig for me, since it means I don’t have an editor sitting on my shoulder asking for work. It’s been almost seven months since the last post. My followers on Twitter will be aware of the horror with which I’ve watched recent political events unfold—most notably the U.S. presidential election, and the American right playing into the hands of a fringe group of authoritarian extremists.
But the protests give hope. I am a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist. America will get through this. Autocracy is inherently unstable, and the American people are too used to freedom (with granted asterisks on that freedom for women and minorities) to give it up lightly. It’s going to be rough, but it will pass, and, hopefully, what follows will be better.
But enough about the elephant in the room. In spite of international events, I bucked the trend and had a pretty great 2016. Between March and December, I got married, and my wife and I bought our first house, and had our first child. That’s enough to keep most people occupied for a couple of years, so maybe it’s no surprise that side gigs fell away.
Over the next few months, I’ll be taking this blog back to regular (or less-irregular) activity. It’ll mostly be link-blog type stuff (mostly arts, some politics, since there is no escaping politics, and there is really no escaping politics now), with the odd longer comment piece, and links to anything I write elsewhere online.
There is also a bigger project, which I have been working on for some time, and will announce before the end of the month.