The shape of things to come

Since the election presents a sort of watershed moment when political bloggers will suddenly need to find something new to blog about, I'm going to take a moment to let you know the direction I expect archy to be heading over the next few months.

I don't spend a lot of time talking about my personal life on archy, but longtime readers will know that my mother has cancer and that I frequently visit her. Last week, we found out that her cancer had taken a turn for the worse. As the only one of the kids who lives in the same state, that means I'll be spending a lot more time with her, talking to he doctors and just generally being there for her. I might drop an update into the blog now and again. Other than that the main effect this crisis will have on archy will be to make my posting even more erratic than usual. Besides the travel keeping me offline for days at a time, I never know how this kind of emotional stress will manifest itself. Sometimes, I clam up and don't have the energy to deal with anything else. Sometimes, I have a manic need to distract myself and become very productive. No doubt this will make posting more erratic still.

As to what I might be writing about during those productive moments, I can offer a few predictions.

Naturally, I'll want to post-mortem the election and speculate about the future shape of American politics. Like every other blogger, I have strong opinions about what the next administration and congress "must" do to restore the republic and weather our current crises. I'll be making my own pompous pronouncements and comment on other writers' pompous pronouncements over the next few weeks. If Obama wins, as we expect him to, the Republicans will not easily accept their loss of power. They will stay on the attack and do everything in their power to sabotage his presidency. I'll be making some suggestions about how we little people can fight that.

Once the election night hangover has passed, I plan on going back to writing about more non-political topics. I have some history, science, nature, and entertaining conspiracy theory ideas that have been on the back burner for a while. I had just started working again on the mammoth book when I heard about Mom. Sitting in doctors' offices is actually a good time to get caught up on serious reading. I'll be using the blog to work out some mammoth ideas. I also recently started gathering materials for another project--possibly a book idea if I ever finish the mammoth book. I'll drop a few hints about that in the next few weeks.

Clever Wife has started a home business with me as her sole employee. I'll soon have an announcement about that, to be followed by frequent pleas for patronage and updates about our adventures in the land of commerce.

That's about it. I'm not going away. Even though I might not post for long stretches, I'll always come back. Hopefully, I can make it interesting enough that you'll come back, too.