A Broken Resolution, and a New Focus

My New Year's Resolution for 2014 was to blog more.  Well, it's February 4th and I'm only getting around to writing my first post now.  I know, right? Sue me.

To be honest with you, I've been wondering what to do with this thing.  As you've undoubtedly noticed, the number of blog posts I've written over the last few years has declined, and I proportionally blame this, in part, to the quality of Topps' recent baseball products.  (If they don't give a shit anymore, why should I?)  But even if things were all hunky-dorey in The Hobby, I doubt I'd be blogging much about it.

About ten years ago I went through the same lull where I took a few years off from my "webzine" (remember them?).  I was burnt out and needed a break.  All life is cyclical; everything evolves from The Great Magnet.

(OBTW, if you actually want to read the "old" Stale Gum, and trust me you don't, you can find it if you know where to look.)

It was only after I discovered the blog format and began reading cardblogs like Ben Henry's Baseball Card Blog and the Cardboard Junkie that I was inspired to re-launch Stale Gum in the blog format; which, in turn, probably inspired others to start their own cardblogs.  (I shouldn't say "probably." The e-mails, personal messages, and cardshow shout-outs I've received over the years proves it.)  I'm not going to take the credit for the late-2000s boom in cardblogs, but if there was ever a "Golden Age" of card blogging and of Stale Gum, I'd say the years 2006-2010 were it.  For the first time since the days of Jefferson Burdick's mimeographed newsletters, the collector had a voice this Hobby; a voice that you just didn't hear all that much from in the Mainstream Hobby Media.  It also helped that most of the card products were still somewhat collectable.

I guess I'm in the same rut now that I was in 2002-04.  When the King of The Bloggers declares that "Blogging is Dead," maybe it's time to this puppy to sleep, give yourself a pat on the back, and move on.  Besides, the cool kids have gravitated towards Twitter doing when used to be called "micro-blogging."

Twitter is a great tool and had it been around in the early-2000s, I doubt this blog would even exist.  But there are some things you just can't compress into 140 characters -- or even a series of 140-character Tweets.  But then again, there are some things just not worthy of a traditional blog post.

So tonight, in this, the Fourth Day of the Second Month in this Foul Year of Our Lord, Two-Thousand Fourteen, I'm giving Stale Gum a new focus. The 800-1000 word blogposts won't be entirely gone, just less frequent.   In its place, I'm going to try to write a series of 50-100 word posts -- maybe once a day or a couple of times a week.  Or, like, whenever.

Always Be Collecting