Goodbye

Nothing lasts forever. All good things come to an end.

And so this will be my final ONT.

I've been doing them since 2008ish, on average 5 nights a week, 48 weeks a year and as far as I know I've never missed a regularly scheduled ONT. If you run the numbers, that's something like 1900+ ONTs which is a pretty solid achievement. Even if a quarter of them were in fact slapdash, half-assed affairs, that's still 1400+ quality full-value ONTs in the portfolio.

And it's been fun and enjoyable over this time which is why I've kept on doing them. But I'm not going to lie - it's also been a bit of a grind. It's like having a second job except the only pay is my own satisfaction, an attaboy on occasion, and getting to see my output spark the funneh in the comments once in a while.

To be fair though a lot of the stuff I did for the ONT I probably would have done anyway since I read a lot and I'm a political geek - and have been one since my earliest days. And by early days I mean early - going back to when I was barely pubescent and first discovered my dad's stash of Milton Friedman books in his sock drawer and then later in middle school when I hounded my mother into driving me and my best friend downtown so we could work the phones for Reagan's 1980 campaign (I still wasn't old enough to vote for him in 1984 either).

From there it was obscure political chat areas on dial-up BBSes and by college I was hitting usenet hard and mainlining Burke with a Kirk chaser. Then came talk radio, AOL forums, and then later the Cambrian explosion of conservative blogs and an actual right wing online community. I've always been somewhere contributing in my own small way and eventually I found my way here, a fun-loving Animal House hiding a smart military blog.

But no place is ever immune to the forces of change and events. Nor are people. And eight years of Obama have taken their toll everywhere. Good cheer and humor have slowly faded and now these are the days of knives and sinat chinam.

Sadly I seem to be out of step with the tenor of the times. And probably out of step with the majority of commenters here. Perhaps if I were more clever, more mercenary, I would get ahead of the trend, work it, and parlay it into money and influence. Alas I'm not clever in this way. And it sounds like a jay-oh-bee.

So rather than continue on in what is likely to become an ever more un-fun endeavor, I'd rather call it a day and leave on a high note with a solid body of work behind me.

What will I do next? I don't know. I have no plans.

I might blog on occasion possibly on things completely non-political. Or focus completely on real-world stuff and/or take my own modified, limited, personal version of the Benedict Option. Or perhaps nothing at all in particular. I make no promises or commitments.

Will we ever meet again? Maybe. Possibly. The future is uncertain. But the internets aren't that big. So probably.

In the meantime you can check out what I'm up to at my ur-blog, http://maetenloch.blogspot.com.

And just to be clear this has nothing to do with Ace. He's always treated me kindly and been supportive and willing to do whatever he could to make doing the ONTs easier on me. The private Ace is pretty much the same as the public Ace except maybe funnier. He's a good guy who deserves more than he's received. However honesty does compel me to point out that his promised blog dental coverage was to put it charitably a wild exaggeration.

I do sincerely thank you all for the good times here.

And should bad times come remember this: Nothing lasts forever. All bad things come to an end too.

P.S. Here is the Jennifer Connelly gif that I always promised you guys if you could ever behave yourselves: https://goo.gl/photos/4u2Vze55AnBGh6vq5 So don't say I never gave you nothin'. :)

P.P.S. And I tip this 40 in memory of the late genghis. He created the ONT. I got to drive it for a few years.

posted by Maetenloch at 11:02 PM

| Access Comments