As I hurtle toward the new year, I tend to think of this blog. Something over 70 posts this year, which ain't nothin' kids, it's 55,000 words, a short novel if you were to gather it together in a 1970s style original paperback, the kind with the cigarette ads in the middle. Compare that on the one hand to the measly 16 posts I wrote in 2024, a total that would barely fill a short novella. Compare, on the other hand, to the 687 posts I wrote in 2021 (312,000 words, we're in Brandon Sanderson territory now), or the astonishing 550 posts I write in 2011 (419,000 words). Look out Will Durant, Look out Bill Shirer. I'm looking at you, Caro.
Writing here, as I've often said, is my favorite writing. Finding the time these days is a challenge, but the bigger challenge is finding what I want to say that I haven't already said. I've repeated myself plenty in the millions of words I've put down here these last two decades. I'd like to repeat myself less in the future.
What to write about? Well, let's start with what not to write about. This will undoubtably disappoint some readers, but I'm done with tech writing, paperless writing, Obsidian writing, how-to writing. Been there. Done that. That particular well has run dry. It was a rich well for a long time, and I know that a lot of readers first arrived here on the heels of a Going Paperless post.
So, what to write about? Two things come immediately to mind:
ONE. On January 1, 2026, the list of books I've reading since 1996 will be 30 years old. Thirty years! I was 24 when I started that list, on something of a whim while visiting my grandparents in New York. Little did I know the monster that list would produce. On that date there will be just about (if not exactly) 1,500 books on that list. Earlier this year, I started (and then stalled) on a new series, Shelf Life, which was a kind of autobiographical retrospectives of the books on my shelf. I wrote ten episodes and then stalled, but in this case, it was not for lack of desire, but lack of time, In 2026, I'd like to resume that series, and perhaps frame it initially as a retrospective look at the thirty best books I've read in 30 years1.
TWO. In January 2011, I began my Vacation in the Golden Age, reading the old issues of Astounding Science Fiction and writing about the experience and what I read in each issue. I continued that series for the first 42 episodes / issues from July 1939 through November 1942. And then life caught up and I stopped. I've always wanted to finish. The magazines are there on my shelf, waiting to be read, I just need to oil my time machine and head back into the Golden Age2.
There are other things I want to write about. Commentary, humor, observations. I would love to write something along the lines of E. B. White's One Man's Meat but I'm simply not that capable of a writer at this point3. But these two items, Shelf-Life and Vacation in the Golden Age are the ones whose gravity is strongest at the moment. So, if you are looking for some coming attractions for this blog in 2026, I'd keep my eyes open. Meanwhile, I'll do what I can.
