Yes, Blogging is Still Worthwhile

I know, I know.

I promised I wouldn't let this blog lie dormant again, in 2018, but I haven't posted a sentence here since. The reason is simply that I've been occupied with a much larger writing project, that has consumed the bulk of my time away from my job, from which I retired yesterday.

At last I have the time free not only for other writing projects, but for this blog, and another I started a few years ago, but which I hid as I simply had not the time to spare for it, In Search of Civilization, a place to discuss anything that doesn't concern neighborhood and Chicago matters. I expect to have the blog live in a few days, but my posts on both sites will be rather sporadic, because there are many more claims on my time than I expected to have in retirement. Really, I don't know how anyone can be bored in retirement; most people I know find that their calendars fill up quickly- writing projects, painting, working out, travel, socializing, in addition to hundreds of books to be read and events to attend, in addition to the usual course-of-living chores.

Many people might wonder why anyone who doesn't already have a well-established blog with a large readership, would bother with one these days. It's thought that social media has made blogging beside the point, and that may be true for people for whom a blog was merely a place to post favorite news articles, and connect with friends. Facebook performs those functions rather well, and I've found it useful and entertaining. But it's limited in what you can really do with it. I mean, you can't really write on Facebook, never mind sites like Twitter and Snapchat, that I don't even bother with. A blog is yours, in a way that your social media page can never really be, where your readers will not be distracted by hundreds of other posts from a list of thousands of "friends", to say nothing of advertisements, and you can control the content and appearance to an extent not possible on someone else's site.

As in the past, this blog will focus on Chicago's far north lake front neighborhoods: West Ridge, Rogers Park, and Edgewater, and on issues that effect their residents.