In February, I’ll have been doing this blog for 13 years. \u00a0And in that time, I’ve been through just about every kind of cycle there is – all between 5:30 and 7AM, weekdays.<\/p>\n
Some days – especially in the runup to election time – the material just comes from I have no idea where; I sit up at 7AM, and I’ve got five posts written for a day, and two for the next day, and I wind up taking notes for several more on my phone during the day (major shout-out to the WordPress app for smart-phones!).<\/p>\n
Others? \u00a0It’s like dog-paddling through maple syrup to get anything done at all. \u00a0Which is part of the point, for me; \u00a0developing the self discipline to write\u00a0something\u00a0every day I’m physically able. \u00a0It’s helped in a lot of other parts of my life, so it’s a big net gainer for me.<\/p>\n
This last month has been different. \u00a0And it occurs to me why.<\/p>\n
Two years of DFL majorities in the Legislature have meant no down-time; the Democrats made a big run at Second Amendment rights in 2013 and again last session; the customary stretch of downtime between election and session, where I normally write about music and history and leave politics alone, evaporated.<\/p>\n
This is my first fall without substantial politics to write about since the fall of 2011. \u00a0And it took me a while to remember how to deal with those two months of inter-MN-political writing doldrums.<\/p>\n
The answer, of course, is to take a deep breath and find other things to write about, things I enjoy rather than out of some misguided notion to try to save the world.<\/p>\n
And everything’s pretty darn good, once I get past that!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In February, I’ll have been doing this blog for 13 years. \u00a0And in that time, I’ve been through just about every kind of cycle there is – all between 5:30 and 7AM, weekdays. Some days – especially in the runup to election time – the material just comes from I have no idea where; I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mitch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49644,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49643\/revisions\/49644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}