It’s one of those weeks in the history of this blog I used to dream about around this time last year, when I was basically donating a couple of hours a day (usually 5-7AM and/or 9-11PM) to blogging for the Emmer campaign and the rest of the GOP slate, then racing to the day job, then feeding the kids, then the evening routine, and then – often as not – more blogging.  Back then, I was existing on caffeine and adrenaline and that buzz you get when you’ve got a feeling you’re really onto something.  The pace was frantic, and there was this amazing intensity to blogging…

…that burned me out hard.  After the election, it was probably February before I really got my mojo back.

If I’ve noticed one thing in almost (yeep) ten years of writing this blog, it’s that there’s a cycle to things; the “storms”, if you will, when you’re riding a rocket and on a constant adrenaline buzz are memorable, of course; the 2010 Gubernatorial Election, the 2008 race and the coverage of the Republican National Convention (and, mostly, the protests against it), the 2006 race and the naked media bias, and of course being one degree of separation from the explosion of Rathergate back in 2004, sitting in the studio at the Patriot as John Hinderaker and Scott Johnson were riding in on the curl that’d wash Dan Rather out to palookaville.

And after the storm, if you will, comes the hangover; the days, or weeks, when you can barely think about writing; when you’ve thrown everything you have into it, and don’t think you have any more.  It’s the kind of thing that’s ended more than a few blogs much better than mine.  Me?  I get through the hangover by getting through it; I love writing, even when I hate writing, so I make sure I, well, write.

Because when you weather the hangover, you get to days like today.  The calm before the next storm, if you will.

Oh, it’s really only calm on the surface.  There is a ton of stuff going on behind the scenes.  Stories that have been under the radar for months that are about to break back out into the open.  Projects that have been bubbling along for years that are about to re-erupt  (my “This Was The Year That Was” project, the thirtieth anniversaries of the great albums of the early eighties, is about to start ticking again – and of course, my “World War II: Fact And Myth” series is really just getting started, although a good chunk of it through 2014 is already written).

And of course, another big election.   Maybe the biggest one since 1980, really.

So that’s one thing I’ve learned – there’s a cycle.

The other thing I’ve learned?  The first rule of the “Calm Before The Storm” is “never talk about the calm before the storm” and ruminate that the next couple of months on this blog are going to be all pastoral and low-key.  It’s the best guarantee that something is going to blow up big-time in the next week.

No.  I know better than that.