Readers and writers blog

To make more time for other personal matters, I’ve decided to trim back our twice-weekly blogging schedule, eliminating Thursday posts in favor of Sundays only.

We’ll still post as many new offerings in Works. Instead of one new chapter of serialized book per blog entry, we’ll now post two new chapters on Sundays. And keep you posted on whatever literary matters come our way.

Over the past two years, Sunday has proved to be our best readership day. Thursday readership also has been OK, but the difficulty of posting twice a week instead of once is that a week doesn’t easily divide into two. So, in order to get two equal periods per week, each of 3½ days, I’ve been posting just after midnight Thursday and just after noon Sunday. That Thursday post has been a bear.

Another difficulty is that while 3½ days is plenty of time to write a post, much of the rest of that period is spent thinking about what to write about, not to mention reading our colleagues on our blogroll, formatting whatever new book chapters we are serializing and, as is my wont, generally lollygagging around.

So what has happened is that when the rest of my life gets in the way, I get way behind on my blogroll reading, formatting and thinking — and spending more time at this computer than I would like.

I retired four years ago from a desk job, and for the past two years, I seem to have developed another one.

Walking has long been my preferred form of exercise, not just for the physical benefits but also for the time it gives me to think, to reflect on life in general and mine in particular. But even though a treadmill sits in the same room with this computer, I don’t spend enough time on it — or walking outdoors.

Finally, playing guitar at Woodstock earlier this month has made me realize I’m not playing as much as I would like any more. During the first two years of my retirement, I was playing more than our present schedule of once a week at a senior citizen residence near our home. Sometimes with Bonnie and her parents, sometimes alone, I used to visit other senior homes in our area to lead singalongs or maybe just to play the guitar or the piano in the background.

I’d like to get off my butt and do more of that. So I’ll see you next Sunday.

– Sid Leavitt