Resolutions

                             And we can't have that...


I'm not one to make a big deal of New Year's resolutions.  Although I've declared a few over the years (and even managed to keep one or two), most of these good intentions -- like overloaded boats wallowing amid turbulent seas -- sank under their own weight into the muddy waters of reality.

Such is life.  It's hard to be perfect.

Still (having yet to learn my lesson, apparently),  I made another such resolution near the end of 2012 that will have a discernible impact on this blog.  Following the urging of many readers over the past five years, I plan to make a serious effort at putting the best material here into a book.

Whether anything tangible will come of this, I honestly don't  know. As the project takes shape, it will probably involve re-writing and combining selected posts to meet the needs of a different narrative platform, along with new material that has not yet appeared on the blog.  If all goes well, you'll find out here.  If not,  then this resolution -- like so many others -- will soon be forgotten by you, and regretted by me for a long time to come.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so for better or worse, I'll give it my best shot.

I set a goal early on of putting up a readable post here every Sunday, with an occasional mid-week offering just for fun.  I needed that discipline, and having to meet those weekly deadlines at the keyboard was a very good thing for me... but all good things come to an end.  Factoring in the time and effort the book project will require with a tentative-but-busy work schedule stretching into the foreseeable future, something has to give -- and the loser will be this blog.  There just won't be time to put a book together, make a living, and publish a weekly post.  Although it may not be apparent to anyone else, I do try to uphold a certain standard here (loose though it may be), and don't ever want to foist crappy posts on you simply for the sake of posting.  I've fallen short of that aim from time to time, but not for lack of trying.

A desire to work on other writing projects almost pulled the plug here three years ago, but I decided to forgo those and keep it going. For as long as this book takes -- and given my track record, that could be a while -- I'll continue to post whenever time and inspiration permit. Although BS&T isn't going away, there will be less of it in the year to come.  I have mixed feelings about this, but such is life.  We really can't do or have it all.

So that's what's happening here.  I thought you should know.

Wish me luck folks -- I'm gonna need it...