It’s Been A While
By Mitch Berg
I haven’t disapeared. Although most of the audience I once gathered around here, gradually and then very suddenly, has.
My writing, at least here, has pretty much fallen off a cliff, obviously. Part of it is the need to make some actual bank – most of the considered political writing I do goes to Hot Air.
Part of it is energy. I’m still the frenetic peripatetic I’ve always been – but my energy is being drawn in a lot of different directions. I’m a partner in a tech startup – which is currently in the “Work 12+ hour days” phase, but not quite to the “Pay a salary” phase.
And part of me is trying to find something else that I haven’t said dozens of times before. In 24 (yow) years of writing a blog, much of it writing 2-4 or more posts a day (!), there isn’t much I haven’t covered.
I want to write, and write here – but about what?
I keep the blog going because there’s material to mine for other projects, sources and quotes I still use constantly, and stories that people still talk about. Book projects – “Twenty Years Ago Today” and “Berg’s Law” – are all very possible, still, after all these years. Heck, even “Trulbert” has some life in it yet.
But getting up at 5AM to write about Tim Walz or Mark Dayton or Mike Hatch, when I’ve got stuff to design and code to write and strategy to strategize, seems to rise to the level less and less anymore.
And that bothers me. I read “Trulbert” the other day – and I thought “who was that guy writing this stuff?” It was me – but a different me with different motivations than I have now.
And I can feel that me trying to come back to the surface. There’s still stuff to write about. But different stuff. And I need to get back into the habit.
Oh, yeah – it doesn’t help that WordPress just keeps getting shittier and shittier every release. But after 20 years on the platform, switching is just a lousy option.
Anyway – I’m still here, for those of you who still are.
And with a little luck and a whiff of inspiration, I’ll be back more, one way or another.
