Wow. I think I’m finally tired of blogging. Perhaps the time has come to move on to other things. I’ll go to the end of June and decide then.
Lamentations on Chemistry
Editorials of a Scientist Political
Wow. I think I’m finally tired of blogging. Perhaps the time has come to move on to other things. I’ll go to the end of June and decide then.
Lamentations on Chemistry 
You’re probably posting too much. Quality not quantity? But it’s possible any of us only have a finite pool of meaningful things to say. Your own blogs spans geology, chemistry, politics, theater etc. So you’ve diluted your audience, and possibly your own interest.
Question: Are your hits declining? My guess is that when people become unemployed, the first thing they do is start a blog. Hence readers become content producers.
I think a good next step for you would to be to write a play for the theater. You could post it online and we could edit it. If you’re lucky it might be produced posthumously (funny line from “Bullets over Broadway”, a great Woody Allen film about the theater and not selling out.)
You make some good points- I am spread a bit thin. I blog because I like to write. The damning truth is that the act of writing is the act of thinking for me, and the content I have produced so far is a kind of carnival.
Having tired of blogging three times, I can say that it was all due to the frequency of posting. My suggestion: stop regular posting for a while, but keep the blog up (wordpress.com is free!). When you have something to say, say it. Most people probably check your blog via RSS anyway, so they’ll know when you post.
You are right about the frequency of posting. It gets to be a sort of addiction that needs feeding. Pretty soon ones posts sound like idle blather.
“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth; banks are going bust; shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter; punks are running wild in the street, and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it.
“We all know things are bad — worse than bad — they’re crazy.
“It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we’re living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, “Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.
“All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad. You’ve gotta say, ‘I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!’
“So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell,
“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”
Howard Beale, Network, 1976
Uncle Al is 1069 essays into venting his internal rage… then he goes through an airport or proposes a chemical structure and wishes the entire world had but a single throat that he might slit it. What cannot be slit can be skewered.
The Howard Beale Show. Great movie, Network.
Uncle Al is the Hunter S. Thompson of Science. There is no higher honor I can bestow. I am jealous.
“8^>) 1070 essays. US annual electricity generation is 4.1 terawatt-hours. Dr. Schund can generate 36.52 TW-hr/yr with no power plants of any kind, no visible plumes, total resistance to terrorist incursion, and net zero incremental acreage while disobeying neither conservation laws nor equilibrium thermodynamics, and using unremarkable extant technology. $Zero personnel costs. Electricity too cheap to meter!
And it’s good for you.