The beginning of the end (kinda sorta)

As you may recall, back in January I said I was going to shut down this blog sometime this year, that I was tired of it and just not feeling the joy, but I wasn't sure when. I did slow down considerably on my posting at JD's suggestion, but I have to tell you I lasted about 9 months longer than I thought I would even with me tapping the brakes.

https://ogdaa.blogspot.com/2025/01/yeah-im-back.html

Over the past couple of months I've gotten numerous emails and comments from long-time readers about it. One common theme seems to be to seriously scale back and maybe post just one day a week. That seems to be a reasonable request and I'm a reasonable man, so I think I'll give it a shot. After January 2 2026, I'll try to do a post an hour on Fridays only and see how that works out. Hell, who knows - maybe it'll give me more time to knock out a few more stories that y'all seem to enjoy so much for some gawdawful reason.

One major change that was suggested by a gentleman via the mail this past week is going to be shutting off the comments, which is going to happen much more sooner than later - matter of fact, I may cut them off today. Christmas is just a few days away and I've got shit to do.

I hate moderating comments for a few reasons, the main one being comment moderation takes up more of my time than the actual posting. I've always felt that if I moderated comments I had an obligation to stay on top of them so I'd find myself getting online every so often to do just that, no matter what I was doing. Seriously, I could be in the middle of a good book or working on a gun or whatever and find myself putting that down and picking up my laptop. If I'm working outside or have been out of town, the first thing I do when I hit the door is moderate comments.

Another reason is I absolutely hate anonymous comments. Look, y'all drop a single comment and then you leave. Me, I'm looking at 20 or more comments at a time several times a day trying to figure out who is who and what goes where. Am I talking with Anon 1, Anon 2 or Anon 3? Who knows? I've begged, cajoled and pleaded with y'all to pick a screen name and stick with it so I can see who the players are and while many of you did just that (and I appreciate it more than you know), I've had more than a few flat out tell me they weren't going to do it.  There was even one asshole who started using other people's screen names to prove it didn't make any difference. Yeah well, there's this thing called integrity, something he was evidently lacking.

And finally, the last reason is the lack of civility with a lot of commenters. When I first started blogging, if somebody disagreed with another commenter I'd see, "I'm not sure I understand your way of thinking, but...."  What I get now more often than not is, "You're a stupid motherfucker, you know that?" That started within a few days of me coming back to this blog platform which allows anonymous comments. Apparently anonymity emboldens assholes. What really pisses me off is I sink to their level when I call them on it and that's been pointed out to me by several long-time readers.

So yeah, I'll continue to do daily posts until January 2nd, then it'll be Fridays only after that. We'll see how long that lasts.

Thanks.