Can It Really Have Been Seven Years?

You can blame it on my good friend, copy editor extraordinaire Charlie Smyth. He was interested in entering what was then the new world of blogging, and since he wasn’t as comfortable with computer technology as I had become, he asked for some recommendations on how to get started. Up to then, I had shied away from blogging, though I was very involved with a book-oriented Web site called January Magazine. I didn’t really know how to advise Charlie. But I said I’d take a look into the Web-publishing service Blogger, and let him know what I thought he could do with it.

Well, that was seven years ago. My investigation of Blogger led me to create this site you’re now scrolling through, Limbo. I started out simply playing around, not producing anything for public consumption, just testing the software. However, I quickly realized that Limbo had potential, and (thanks to my having spent years as a journalist and editor, and being a generally curious person) I had lots of things to say that I thought other people might wish to hear--about books, history, politics, travel, movies, television, and much, much more.

So on July 16, 2005, I introduced myself on this page, promising to keep Limbo “fresh and lively” for as long as I could.

Since that time, hordes of other bloggers have fallen by the wayside, having found the exercise of maintaining one of these “Web logs” too arduous in the long-term. (It’s far easier to dash off a couple of sentences or post cute cat art on Facebook.) I’ve come near to abandoning this project a few times over the years as well, but have always found ways to reinvigorate my interest in Limbo.

About a year after I launched this blog, I created a second one, The Rap Sheet, a crime-fiction-oriented page that has since won or been nominated for a variety of national awards. (I also write a third blog, the book design-oriented Killer Covers.) At present, I spend a great deal more time working on The Rap Sheet than I do on Limbo, because I think I can have greater impact commenting on crime, mystery, and thriller fiction than I can as a political analyst. There are too many other smart people writing about politics these days, and I am not nearly so well-connected to that world as are people such as Steve Benen (The Maddow Blog), Kevin Drum (Mother Jones), and Ed Kilgore (Washington Monthly).

Yet even after seven years and 1,178 posts, I still try to keep Limbo “fresh and lively”--and at times controversial. It has been a good run thus far, and I hope to keep my hand in the blogging mix for many more years to come. Thank you for reading Limbo.

(Photo of J. Kingston Pierce © 2012 by Peer van den Boomen)