The future of this blog

So, yesterday I shut down access to all the previous blog posts.  A search came up on my sitemeter that I found alarming.  I'm not all that anonymous here, really, but I'm not going to be fired for what I've written.

Honestly, I've been thinking of taking this blog down for awhile. I'm not saving the world here.  My numbers aren't even that high; most days I don't even check my sitemeter or stats.  And I just don't want to be a rant blogger anymore.

The problem with blogging is that it's so easy to fall back into rant mode.  It's what people want to read, it's what gets the most audience participation and feedback.  I know my audience, and I've been guilty of writing what the audience wanted to hear - when I myself was in sympathy (or at least partly in sympathy) with those positions.

But I don't want to be Dr. Laura.  First off, no one really likes Dr. Laura.  They like to hear her stick it to annoying or immoral people, but they don't like her personally.  I don't want to be the fighting dog everyone roots for in the ring.  They also don't back up Dr. Laura.  They figure she can take it because she can dish it out, but her every misstep is hashed out by the public which must be hard to take.  I just want to be a normal person.  For about four years I had a normal person's blog.  I wrote about my kid, my garden, the books I read, the movies I saw.  Once in a while I went on a tear about something that upset me, but mostly I kept it clean.  And boring.  No one ever read it.

When I started the Lost Art blog I was very frustrated.  I'd been forced for years, in various jobs I'd done, to listen to other people's (mostly women's) very liberal opinions as if they were gospel and to at least tacitly sign off on lifestyles I thought were, at best, ill-advised.  In order to keep the peace, I tried to keep my mouth shut, but I built up quite a bit of resentment over time.  This blog has often been an escape valve for the steam I held in over the last decade, and as a result the rhetoric was often over-the-top or accusatory.  I still feel very frustrated with modern behavior, values and politics - I think they are an active hindrance to my raising my son to be a safe, productive, and good person.   But I don't want to spend my time nursing that anger.  I can't change the way things are or what other people do or believe.  I can only change how I behave and how I react to others.

I'm also a real person with real flaws.  I don't always follow the advice I give.  I can be lazy despite disdaining laziness.  I eat junk sometimes even as I grow, cook, eat, and promote organic food.  I don't always cook a five-course meal for my husband, and I sometimes lose it with my kid.  I put on two pounds over Christmas.  I have a knee-jerk tendency to make sweeping judgments.  The area I live in has experienced a rash of rather high-profile crimes, and I've begun to feel less safe.  This makes me more reactive and less objective - more prone to judge other people not on their intrinsic value (how God sees them), but on whether they are a threat to me and mine.  I think this is a human response, but I don't want to put it forward as admirable.

As I discussed a year or so ago when I reviewed The Fourth Turning, I think we are going through an unraveling, and I think this is going to result in some serious clashes - racial, class, generational - that are not going to be pleasant.  People are feeling their standard of living decline, and they sense that it's not temporary.  No one likes that, and we are all ready to place the blame on whomever is handy, guilty or not.  I have my own opinions, yes, but I don't for one minute believe that I am truly objective, and I don't want to be responsible for an attack on innocents.  I also don't want to foster more anger or hostility.  We'll all just have to survive as we can.  I've been more blessed than many in my family and my circumstances.

I don't know what to do with this blog, but for now I'm keeping most of my pieces of advice up as I think some have found them helpful.  Nearly all of the rants are down.  I realize this makes me less entertaining.  I'm willing to sacrifice that.

I didn't take this blog down as a stunt and I'm not holding it hostage until enough people tell me how wonderful I am.  I'm just unsure of how to proceed from here as a blogger or writer.  Your comments and prayers are always appreciated.