It’s hard to be a blogger. I’ve done it for several years now and love it, but it’s hard. You’ve probably noticed that I’m not quite as, um, bloggy as I have been in months or years past. There are several reasons that I’ll share in a moment.

However, we did hit a milestone recently: my 1000th post. Does that sound like a lot? It does to me. And that’s just the ones I have on this version of the site, which includes everything since 2006. My old site had additional updates from before 2006, a blog of sorts before I even knew to call it a blog, that I never got around to converting into the new format.

Anyway, I’m still committed to this site, but here are the main reasons I’ve slowed down:

1. Work – Due to some changes at work, it’s a bit more difficult to find the opportunity to write, find fun pictures, and work on the design. PM me if you want to know more details. (I hear a fairy-sized Deion Sanders yelling at me, “Shame on you for letting The Man keep you down!”)
2. Ideas – Sometimes I have several good ideas. On occasion I’ll think of a good topic and save it for later, giving me a queue of posts gestating until the opportunity arrives. Other times I hit a dry patch when I’m just living my life and things are good but nothing really seems worth writing about. My muse is fickle. She comes and goes and never leaves a note.
3. Types of Posts – As you’ve probably seen, I post lots of different stuff here. My favorite ones to write are the really heavy ones that stretch my brain, make me do research or wrestle with an important topic, and leave me feeling like I’ve accomplished something. If I stretch a reader’s brain and maybe even generate a thoughtful comment, that post gets bonus points. However, as you probably figured, those are the hardest ones to write and tend to take the longest, which limits how often I can do them. You guys voted that this type of post isn’t your favorite, either, maybe because some of my views are on the wacky side. That’s why I’ve tried to shift the focus of the blog a bit since the poll to focus a little more on the topics you guys like best: updates on my family, random stuff about me, and humor. Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to find anything worth sharing about the dump that Jonathan took in the bathtub (OK, that was a little funny. Two weeks later. Since Jenny kindly cleaned it up.), the nail in our tire on the swagger wagon, or my new carbon-neutral electric weed whacker.
4. Facebook – Sure, it’s an easy scapegoat for lots of issues, but in the case of my blog slowdown, it does deserve a bit of responsibility. It’s not that I spend too much time on Facebook to blog, although I do spend a lot of time there. It’s that many of the tidbits and links I want to share with the world are very, very easy to share on Facebook and more complex to share on here. If I find an interesting article, hear something amusing, or take a funny picture of the boys, I can post it to my Facebook wall with a couple of clicks and easily add commentary through my phone. So naturally I post more stuff on Facebook. A lot more. And it’s only for the people I actually know (and choose not to block) because some of it is more personal.

So rest assured, I’m not abandoning AndyBox.com, but for the forseeable future, I won’t be posting 20+ times a month like I’ve done at times in the past. As always, I welcome your feedback!