The thoughts of a writer, activist, and alcohol enthusiast
As astute readers of the blog are aware, I’ve not been posting for the past couple of weeks. Basically, I’m dealing with a serious health issue and that’s taking up most of my emotional energy and creativity.
I’m putting the blog on hiatus for the next couple of weeks or so while I sort things out.
I hope to be back at it by mid-December.
Astute readers of my blog will notice that I’ve missed a couple of posts on the schedule recently. This was due to family responsibilities. I’m not going to go into details publicly, but suffice it to say that this year our family Thanksgiving holiday schedule includes an entry titled “internment of the ashes.”
It’s my hope to be able resume a normal posting schedule after this holiday weekend, because there’s certainly a lot going on in the world that I want to unpack including the Canadian federal election; the far-right’s continued attack on activists (including the closure of Soufi’s restaurant following a campaign of cowardly threats by white supremacists and hate groups); the threats against HCCI by the same hate groups and apparently by an official representative of the PPC; the latest news on the continuing fallout from the Pride attack by (you guessed it) those same hate groups; antisemitic graffiti left at a synagogue and the harassment and intimidation of Muslims in their mosque in Hamilton; the community reaction to the horrifying murder of a bullied teenager in Hamilton; the attack in Halle by yet another far-right shooter; and of course the betrayal of the Kurds and the opening stages of a feared genocide in Rojava.
…
It’s been a bad week.
Just a quick note to acknowledge some changes around here — I’ve updated the blog’s look and fiddled with the colours to make it a little less stock-Wordpress. I’ve added some new content, including subscribe and support options to the right of the page, Facebook and Twitter share links at the bottom of posts and a few other cosmetic changes, including a page setting that will allow me to hide long posts behind a “continue reading” link.
Continue reading “Blog Changes”So, after the first couple of weeks of trying to get this blog underway, I’ve come to a decision. I’d originally intended to write shorter posts — perhaps a thousand words each, maximum, three times per week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Then the reality of my Mondays and Wednesdays kicked in, so I realized I needed to publish Tuesdays, Thursdays and, as a compromise, Saturdays. This is turning out to be sub-optimal.
To complicate matters, I seem unable to limit myself to a thousand words. Most of my posts are averaging about three thousand words, except for the one on abortion which I’m super unhappy with — I feel like I only barely scratched the surface. (I’ll almost certainly revisit the topic later.)
The problem with a three-thousand word post is that it’s the functional equivalent of a ten-page essay. Doing three ten-pages essays a week, every single week, isn’t sustainable in the long run; it’s like crunch week at college, but permanently. And I’m not doing that permanently. As it is I’m getting some serious anxiety about meeting my self-imposed deadlines.
So, here’s my latest compromise — I’ll stick with the longer posts, but I’m going to publish only twice a week instead of three times. Let’s call it Tuesdays and Fridays, which gives me a weekend and lets me meet my Monday obligations.
We’ll see how it all plays out. Tomorrow’s post, which I’m already working on, is going to be on the recent attacks and threats against LGBTQ events both here in Canada and in the US. I’ll try and get it up in good time tomorrow afternoon.
When I started this blog I was hoping to post three times per week. Sadly, life has decided, with the sublime and subtle timing of the great teacher, to kick me solidly in the crotch.
We’ve had intermittent internet issues all week, with our ISP insisting there’s nothing wrong. I’m currently waiting for a technician from our new ISP to come out to the house and install our new fiber optic internet connection. This is going to take up the bulk of the next six to ten hours, so no post today. I’ll try and make it up to you all later.