I HAVE BEEN researching, writing and editing Dispatches from Dystopia and its predecessor Outside Agitator's Notebook since the first week in October 2009.
But the only lesson I am able to glean from that 108-month effort is, "why bother?"
I had hoped my work would be -- as it sometimes was during the 30 years I worked as an award-winning member of the editorial staffs of various newspapers and magazines and as a longtime stringer for United Press International -- a progressive influence.
But I was never able to come up with a format fetching enough to empower either of this blog's incarnations.
Readership, which peaked at about 3,500 maybe five years ago, fell off to near zero after old age began chronically sidelining me with various geriatric illnesses, and it has never exceeded more than about 1,600 readers since then.
Indeed the only discernible consequence of my work as a blogger is various forms of harassment, whether by government agents and/or their storm-trooper allies or merely by the inescapable wretchedness that has defined my life since its beginning, I will probably never know.
Nor does it really matter.
Hence, in this the fourth week after my 79th birthday, I am stopping -- I know not for how long. I am retaining the Dispatches domain name and of course intend to continue writing, but I am not sure when this new work might start appearing nor even whether it will be journalism or fiction.
Meanwhile I thank you all for your readership; I am truly sorry I have not been able to serve you and our socialist cause more effectively.
LB/23 April 2019
But the only lesson I am able to glean from that 108-month effort is, "why bother?"
I had hoped my work would be -- as it sometimes was during the 30 years I worked as an award-winning member of the editorial staffs of various newspapers and magazines and as a longtime stringer for United Press International -- a progressive influence.
But I was never able to come up with a format fetching enough to empower either of this blog's incarnations.
Readership, which peaked at about 3,500 maybe five years ago, fell off to near zero after old age began chronically sidelining me with various geriatric illnesses, and it has never exceeded more than about 1,600 readers since then.
Indeed the only discernible consequence of my work as a blogger is various forms of harassment, whether by government agents and/or their storm-trooper allies or merely by the inescapable wretchedness that has defined my life since its beginning, I will probably never know.
Nor does it really matter.
Hence, in this the fourth week after my 79th birthday, I am stopping -- I know not for how long. I am retaining the Dispatches domain name and of course intend to continue writing, but I am not sure when this new work might start appearing nor even whether it will be journalism or fiction.
Meanwhile I thank you all for your readership; I am truly sorry I have not been able to serve you and our socialist cause more effectively.
LB/23 April 2019
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