Quo Vadis, Rougblog?

Some people are capable of simply opening their mouths and having a noteworthy quote come spilling out. These people practically yawn wisdom. Others are able to sit down and type prolifically, hammering out thousands of words of careful, cogent and informative text--all while using proper grammar and the perfect, number, of, commas.

I both admire and loathe the gifted without whom my skills would seem so much more monumental. My 9th grade shop class would have proven so much more gratifying if the doorstop I made had actually, you know, held a door open, or if it had looked almost as balanced and elegant as Cub Bontrager's stupid coffee table. (At least I think it was Cub. In any case, he's getting the blame until someone else fesses up.)

As millions of people around the world are finding out, blogging is great fun to start with. As most of those people have also discovered, it is a relatively thankless task (unless a person really takes the time to thank himself) and it can only be accomplished by sacrificing time that would otherwise be dedicated to household tasks, showering, eating lunch, or watching Alice reruns. Don't for a second believe I don't understand the value of a clean pair of boxers or, for that matter, the potential confusion over a double negative.

2009 is actually the fifth calender year in which I have been blogging. There have been several significant lapses during that time. I admire the bloggers who can churn out pertinent content on a daily basis, many of whom accomplish this seven days a week and twelve months a year seemingly without any breaks or developing severe facial tics. While there is a definite variance in the quality that some of these bloggers produce, there are many that are able to do the keyboard equivalent of yawning wisdom day after day.

I did not begin the blog to necessary pout about politics all of the time. I think I wanted it to be more personal. Stories, I suppose, about how mussed up a single father's life can get when he often feels inadequate to even take care of himself, much less have children depending on him to do things like wash the dishes and keep crayons out of the pants pockets before they hit the laundry.

Since politics is important to me I believe I did anticipate that politics would be a major component of the blog's content, just not the component within which every other post topic would be sandwiched. Given its own isolated laboratory and unmolested by any direction of foresight, The Rougblog evolved into something it wasn't intended to become, sprouting the equivalent of a large floppy ears, squinty eyes, and long flat feet. You know, like someone you would picture from Indiana.

I would not say that I am at a crossroads because I do not see any significant changes occurring immediately. I would say that I feel I am approaching a crossroads where the ultimate direction of The Rougblog might change.

I may begin to experiment a little with the content. I might lapse into more personal stories about what goes on in my own little house of blunders. I was fortunate enough this past year to be able to supply Right Michigan with a series of posts that in truth were more fitted to an online magazine than a blog. I enjoy that sort of writing more, but writing long inane articles takes a lot more time than crafting short bursts of inanity. In the future I might attempt to do more of that sort of writing and post it here for your displeasure. Obviously that would take more time and effort to produce than simply filling you in on the unfortunate generic creamed corn accident of the previous night.

In a perfect world The Rougblog would be rolling in cash, getting 50,000 hits a day, and would be instrumental in landing me a huge book contract. (Don't laugh, I've seen some of the garbage that E.J. Dionne puts out.) In the real world both the Rougblog and the Rougman are broke, the blog is lucky to get 50 hits a day, and E.J. is knocking down the big bucks blathering all things leftist while landing temp gigs on NPR and the Sunday talk shows. Honestly, what could that guy possibly know about cream corn, its flavor, its texture?

Blogging, I'm finding out, is a lot like a journey and it seems I may have ended up on a different path than than the one I had really intended to take. I'm neither on the wrong path nor an unpleasant one, just one that needs to have its surroundings looked at more closely.

As 2009 begins, that is what I'm doing.

I'll let you know what I find out.