Yes, I’m going to try and resuscitate this blog again. I know that my loyal followers (both of you) are very excited. Since it’s been so long, I will reintroduce myself and my reasons/goals for attempting to restart this blog, just in case someone new happens to see it, or in case a former reader thinks I died or lost my mind (maybe I shouldn’t state the second option).
It all started several years ago when a great friend of mine started a blog. I admit I thought it was cool, and it piqued my interest. He has been very faithful to it, posting an entry most days, and he managed to acquire a following (me included) over time. A few years after he began his blog, I received the news that my employer had decided to end my employment (along with about 100 others) in about 9 months. OK, to be fully transparent, I could have kept my job if I would have moved to New Jersey (a major enticement, for sure), but for many reasons (financial suicide being one), I took the severance package that the company offered (reasonably generous) and stopped working in April 2019. A similar thing happened to my great friend, and that’s when he started blogging. When it happened to me, I took it as a sign, so during my lame duck period, although I was still working hard because there was a slim chance that my employment would be extended until the end of 2019, I decided to enter the blogosphere. I made a few posts, and then the blog dried up. Why? well for one thing, we decided to move in early 2020 to be closer to our older daughter, son-in-law, and grandchild (now grandchildren). As we did all of the packing (and some of the moving) ourselves, this endeavor kept me quite busy. And of course, this move coincided with the COVID outbreak, which for me didn’t make things any less busy. And then as the pandemic heated up, I decided to accept a contract position offered to me in mid 2020. It was nice to get the extra money, and it lasted for 16 months until September 2021. At this point, the blog had been derailed.
So, you may ask, why am I trying this again. It’s not due to boredom, as I have a busy and active life (we watch the grandkids 2 days a week, there are 2 dogs which I walk twice a day, I read a lot and am in a book club with my wife, I’m trying to become proficient in French, and once the weather gets a little warmer (I live in upstate NY), I will be playing 9 holes of golf twice a week. I’m sure some of this will come up in future posts. And let me state very clearly that I’m not doing this in the hope that this will go viral and make me famous (and if by some ridiculous fluke it did, I don’t think I’d want the notoriety). I’m doing this because (1) I like to write, and this will help me to do that, (2) by recording my thoughts, it will (hopefully) enhance my family’s memory of me once I leave this world, especially those of my grandkids (as they are rather young right now) and even their kids if they choose to have any, and (3) I am hoping that I can make this interesting enough to be able to have an exchange of ideas with others, especially if they disagree with me or can add to my understanding of a given topic.
I will have no consistent agenda; I will write about topics that interest me as well as about me personally. As I said, I read a lot so that I expect that a decent chunk of the posts will be based on material I read and find interesting. I’m going to try and limit political stuff (although some will undoubtedly creep in) because I don’t want this to turn into a partisan shouting match; there’s already too much of that on the Web already.
My goal will be to write about a post per week. I don’t know what other bloggers do, but I need to write out my posts (either entirely or at least in a detailed outline) before I post them. So I hope to have my first substantive post out within a week of this one, and I’ll try to keep them coming (which means being able to overcome my wandering attention span). If you happen to stumble upon this blog, please give it a shot, and if anything I write moves you, interests you, infuriates you, or otherwise grabs your attention, please comment. I’ll do my best to quickly reply to respond. Fingers crossed; here we go (again).
#Disaffected Musings
Disentangling the mess 