Glad to hear you didn’t take offense, and again, keep up the good work, and most of all, if I may be cliched, have fun. Take care!

Johnny, I’m embarrassed to admit that all too often I take almost the opposite approach from yours: I unthinkingly tap out a quick bunch of words in order to get something on the blog. Fine. It’s my blog and I can do what I want, except I don’t always like looking at the results.

Regarding your trackback, I didn’t take offense in the least. (Well, okay, I curled my lip a little in a “How could he possibly think that” kind of way, but it was all in good spirits.) No, I value your perspective and your feedback, so please: disagree!

I guess my bottom line is I haven’t always felt like I’ve been giving my best effort, and that’s not good enough for me. Accepting that others do, on occasion, pay attention to what I print on this blog makes me more determined not to let my effort lapse.

And the cat… Thanks for asking. The cat (George) is getting better. He’s eating on his own, walking better, and seems in much better spirits. However, given that he had his colon removed, we’re still dealing with the you-don’t-want-to-know-what as his digestive tract adjusts. Let’s just say we’ve done a lo-o-o-ot of laundry lately.

I really appreciated the sentiment of this post – I respect your desire to do something worthwhile, both for you and your readers. You are! It is worthwhile. I have your blog in my site feeds and I read you nearly everyday – you’re one of the more reasonable and conscientious people out there. I appreciate that. I often follow your links, too – you provide a valuable summary of currents in the more liberal side of the stream, which is helpful for me, being a conservative.

I hope my trackback to your Jon Stewart post didn’t have anything to do with any bad feelings on your part. That’s actually a good example of what I was talking about earlier – I started out agreeing with you, actually, but by the time I’d read the transcript and rewritten my post a couple dozen times, I’d ended up at the opposite view. But your post was such that it sparked a desire in me to articulate my own feelings on it, and that’s a good thing. Anything which sends off sparks in people’s minds is good writing. So I hope you took my trackback in the spirit of friendly disagreement

Anyway, please, keep it up. Like I said, I usually disagree with you but I think you’re honest and articulate, and a very good writer. And BTW, how’s your cat doing?

I’ve been having kind of an existential crisis about this blog lately, really asking myself why I’m doing this. I’ve proven to myself that I can be disciplined enough to post on a more-or-less regular schedule. But so what? What’s the point of posting every day if what you’re posting is a bunch of crap? Anyone can do that. I think I still need to find my voice, and I’m realizing lately that I haven’t given that search a lot of attention.

Thanks for reminding me of Rebecca Blood. I actually bought her book when I first started blogging, but I haven’t visited her site in a long time. I’ll add her to my RSS reader and start paying attention to what she does.

And, oh yes, the “lousy blog” line… Of course, that’s meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but the joke would work a lot better if this were a better blog. And you’re not the first person to mention that to me lately, so maybe it is time to drop it.

Back to work…

Writing is hard. It is very difficult to get the self out of the writing. It is quite useless writing stuff that is really addressed to yourself. It is one of the biggest problems I face trying to write anything.

Lots of examples of good writing around, but for one example, I think Rebecca Blood does a very good job – occasionally you can see how she has thought a very great deal before writing one single word, and she seems (to me) to be able to set the goal and keep it in sight. Have a look – http://www.rebeccablood.net.

You might consider dropping the “this lousy blog”. There is a lot of value to readers in a blog that collects clippings from other sources – saves them having to read everywhere themselves. The value is in picking things that are worth reading. If you do this well, then it is not a lousy blog. Do it badly and it sure will be.