Motivation

I started this blog a couple of years ago for no real reason at all. I didn't have any set goal in mind when I did. I wanted to document some of the things happening in and around this part of the nation that is referred to as 'fly-over country' - that is to say the Midwest. It is amazing to look at the analytics and server logs and see that people actually stop by my little home on the range here. That people not only stop by, but that some continue to come back time after time. What it is that makes you come back, I can't figure out. The musings of some unknown guy in some nigh desolate area of the country that the vast majority of people think is still being kept in line by a guy named Matt Dillon.

I was fairly gung-ho about it in the beginning, but then slowly began to wane in the frequency of my posts. But then something happened. A friend of mine...well, really, my best friends wife to be exact started her own blog. And she wrote about her life and her families adventures up in the (even more) desolate area of Minot, North Dakota. For those of you not in the know, if you had a good arm, and a new baseball, you could probably through a baseball from Minot, and have it land in Canada. That's how far north it is. You can't get much more north and still be in the good ol' US of A.

At any rate. She started her blog, and it was good. I was an avid reader. Always interested in seeing pictures of her kids, and seeing what was going on up nawth. And she gave me inspiration to post more frequently, and (I think anyway) more quality stuff. To improve my writing skills as it were. To make something that wasn't just a ho-hum rambling of some faceless guy, in fly-over country. She had blessed me a couple of times with praise in her blog. For which I still am not fully certain I deserved. One simply has to wonder if she did so because we know each other. Our families actually shared a house for about a month up in Alaska (when both she, and the 5/8 were about 7 months pregnant), but that's a story for a different post entirely (and one that I promise I'll get to - eventually).

But, she recently quit took a hiatus from posting. She had a long, informative post about it all. Seems that she just ran out of things to say, or at least, things she wanted to talk about. Maybe she felt like she was getting whiney, or like she was maybe boring people. She wasn't, on both accounts (at least, she did neither in my views), but she made the decision.

Without even realizing it was happening, it seems that my own posts started to dwindle. And you can probably tell, the last couple have pretty much been nothing much at all. A movie thought or two. But looking back, I realized that this started about the same time that Military Mom quit posting on her blog. I think seeing her post so much, actually gave me some sort of motivation to post more myself. Not that it was a contest or anything. But part of it, I think, is that I knew for certain at least someone was reading this, and at least one person was actually enjoying what I wrote (or, at least, went through the trouble to 'claim' to enjoy it).

I've got some things I'm working on now, and hopefully I will soon feel they are ready to post. So I'm certainly going to make an effort to post more frequently. Seriously, I am. I know I've probably said it before, but I really mean it this time. Or maybe I just mean it, but like the 50 new people we see at the gym just after New Year's, it will go good for a while, and then peter out again. And what do I know anyway. Maybe that is like a cycle with people who blog as a passion. Maybe every six or eight or two months, it just gets pushed to the back burner for a while, while the old cranial batteries regenerate, or recharge, or whatever else.

There is a lot coming up. School is about to end for the summer. No. 1 Son was promoted to Corporal in the USMC Jr. ROTC program at his high school. So there should be plenty to write about - at least for the near future.