I suppose it goes without saying after more than two months of inactivity, but this blog is presently dormant and is going to remain that way at least for a while longer. As I indicated elsewhere a couple of weeks ago it was a perfect storm of matters professional (beginning my final semester of teaching at Berkeley, rushing to finish a dissertation, and preparing for my job at the Mount) and personal (fathering a 2-1/2-year-old, preparing for and then welcoming a new infant into our family at the start of October, and getting everything ready for a cross-country move) that ground my already faltering bloggy momentum to a halt, and unfortunately I’m not the sort of person who’s very able to do a given thing in earnest only some of the time. But if circumstances change appropriately in the coming months or years, reviving this short-lived forum is high on my list of things to get to.

Another thing that should go without saying, though with the way the cobwebs have gathered around here the message probably won’t get to enough of the people who deserve to hear it, is that I am deeply grateful to the many people who made my 18 months or so of blogging so enjoyable and – much less importantly – relatively successful. When I took to blogging in a fit of boredom near the start of 2008 I certainly didn’t expect to reach such consistently active levels of traffic, let alone to be invited first to join an exciting venture like Culture11 and then to be picked up by a magazine I enjoy as much as The American Conservative. Hardly a day of active blogging went by when it wasn’t the standard set by the incomparable Daniel Larison that I measured myself against, and while I’m sure I hardly ever got there it has been a thrill to share space alongside him and to engage in virtual conversation with so many other bloggers, as well as all of the insightful readers whose comments consistently kept me on my toes.

So there may be more of this down the line, but in the meantime keep an eye out for me in print in places like TAC and Commonweal, as well as @TAC, dotCommonweal, and The American Scene, where I’ll hopefully resume contributing with some regularity after submitting my dissertation and getting settled on the East Coast. Many thanks to all of you who took the time to hear me out.

Filed under: personal