2006 Begone

I began blogging daily (nightly) back on March 5, 2006. This was after a failed attempt two years earlier, and inspired by a post-Oscar phone call to a friend's house.

The deal I made with myself at the time was to post every day and to cover the two areas that had me opinionating the most with friends who shared similar passions, politics and entertainment. Since I work in the entertainment field, I choose to write only about works or creators that inspire me. With politics, anything goes. Hopefully it won't come back to bite me, but without free political speech, what is America?

Posting daily means that I'm writing daily, which is something I've been trying to do for decades, not always with consistent success. By success I mean just putting something, anything down, without stalling due to internal judgments or external priorities. It also means giving voice to the notions rattling around in my head, releasing them so to uncrowd my mental space. In public. Yeow.

I'm happy to report that, despite a horrific year for death by Bush Administration policy (and I use the term loosely) including so many U.S. soldiers, Iraqi civilians and, in a novelistic capper, an asshole named Saddam Hussein surrounded by ski-masked execution thugs crazily reminiscent of the beheading videos and other cheap snuff imagery, the blog decision has made me (to date) a happier person.

My thanks go out to the readers of Nettertainment, regular, infrequent or one-times, but with special appreciation for those of you who manage to keep checking in. It's been a pleasure to be part of the public discourse, thanks to your attentions.

The commitment to posting daily is a rigor more than anything else, a discipline that I've actually enjoyed even with the costs in sleep deprivation and probably the loss in other off-hour productivity. It's one I currently intend to continue, and will also continue to respond to every reader comment posted.

There's no telling where the New Year will lead, what with the dangers to our nation, the expansion of our arts, and the pressures of a new job I began in early December, but since I'll still have those pesky opinions and evangelical urges clamoring for release, it seems that bloggery is the best therapy.

Thanks again for your patronage, and it's on to 2007.