This place sure has gone downhill

I mean, come on, Dave.

Your profile picture is now a broken URL. You haven't posted in two months. You can practically see the dust bunnies. And six months ago you were seriously thinking of buying a domain name because you were blogging regularly enough that you felt comfortable having a more permanent home for the content.

So what gives?

I don't know. For a few weeks, I loaded up this page every day and stared at it trying to decide what to write about. And then I stopped altogether. I haven't even missed it.

But three things happened to change that.

First, an online friend of mine offered me some workplace advice, based on her own experiences in a situation similar to one I find myself in. On a whim, I went to read her blog and it was really a cool experience -- just reading stupid random stuff about playing hockey and dancing and the trials and tribulations of work and all that. I realized that I missed having an outlet for talking about that stuff.

The second thing is that my buddy Clint said, "Hey, it's been two months." So, yeah, fine.

The third is that I just got back from JavaOne, where everyone talks about how we're in the middle of this revolution from the Information Age into the Participation Age, and how everybody's a publisher of content now. And I'm thinking, yeah, I dig that idea. In fact, I publish content ... like every two months. Shit.

So, there you have it. A rebirth of blogging.

So what's going on in my life? What's the context for future postings which I'll try to make more regularly?

• After treating my body like shit for almost a year, I'm finally realizing that I can't keep it up. I've started working out again, from square one, because I've come to peace with the fact that I've lost most of the fitness I gained in the last push. After only a couple weeks of it, I've started to realize how much I miss it, and I'm a little bit depressed at how far I let myself go.
• My World of Warcraft guild is going through some very tough times, after withdrawing from a raiding alliance due to conflict of vision. Things are very bumpy and we're not sure what the future holds.
• Our home continues to improve. Jessica has spent significant chunks of time working on the outdoors, setting up little flower gardens and whatnot and watering them faithfully. We've finally bought and used a lawnmower. We're looking at carpet and flooring options.
• Things are changing at work. I'll write more once things have been announced to my team (on the off chance someone from work stumbles onto this), but I'm likely to be changing responsibilities fairly soon.
• Our 12-year anniversary is coming up and for the first time we're not traveling anywhere to celebrate. Just day trips.
• Wedding season is coming up -- got a bachelor party to go to soon, and another to plan before autumn.
• My mother is alive and well and living in her own apartment, and coming to grips not just with her health issues but also financial ones.

I'm sure there's more, but that's a quick update. I promise to come back, if for nothing else than to gripe about how hard it is to start focusing on fitness again after months and months of ignoring it....