Sayonara

Andrew Sullivan, perhaps one of the most prolific bloggers of our time recently announced that after fifteen years he is retiring from this activity. In his latest post, he discussed what he would do next. “I want to read again, slowly, carefully,” he wrote. “I want to absorb a difficult book and walk around in my own thoughts with it for a while. I want to have an idea and let it slowly take shape, rather than be instantly blogged.”

When I read his comments, it reminded me that my postings on “Just Saying . . .” have dwindled more and more each of the last three years. In 2015, I’ve published two posts, twenty in 2014, thirty-one in 2013, more than sixty in 2012, and  a total of four hundred and sixty four times since my blogging activity began in 2008. The impulse to tell  the reason for the decline has been percolating over the last year, and Sullivan’s announcement has moved me past the ‘I’ll do it tomorrow” point to this posting.

First of all, I need to digress and explain my initial venture into blogging.  By 2008, I’d spent nearly six years writing most of the novel “Serenity” but I couldn’t figure out how to end the story.  I was stuck. The common malady is generally called “writer’s block.” It took four years of maintaining the practice of nearly daily blog writing before the block disappeared and I was able to finish the story.  As a humorous and coincidental aside, every time I now type the word “blogging” my Auto-correct changes the word to “bogging,” which neatly depicts the state of my writing and mind when I started blogging, i.e. “bogging” begat “blogging.”

The purpose of my blogging was to help me, a retired senior citizen, develop the practice of consistent daily writing to keep me occupied in a fruitful manner while my golf game, and various and sundry other activities, declined in what might be viewed as in an “age-related” fashion. After completing Serenity, I was able to focus more clearly on another project that, as Mr. Sullivan so aptly characterizes as ”an idea that slowly takes shape," the net result being the near-completion of another novel which is now in the final stages of editing.  As that project is slowly coming to an end, other ideas have “slowly taken shape” and I am now at work on another novel, revising my first book, and writing two screenplays based on Serenity and the new novel.

So, what I am “just saying” is that my blog posting is coming to an end.  Thanks so much for having allowed me to present my thoughts, good or bad, to you this past seven years.