I have been brooding about this for months. Mostly the interior argument went like this:
On the one hand: maybe it's time to quit, for various reasons (see below).
On the other hand: I'd like to keep it going through 2023 at least, to make it a full twenty years. And I do enjoy it.
I have a couple of major writing projects in progress, and the blog is a big distraction from them. Always, at least in the back of my mind, I'm concerned about the next post, whether or not this or that is worth writing a post about, writing about it, and so forth. I'm a slow writer, and very easily distracted–I suspect I could be accurately diagnosed with at least a relatively mild form of attention deficit disorder. So even a short and straightforward post is likely to engage my attention for longer than it should. And to keep me from making progress on those big projects.
Secondary reason: one of the big reasons I've kept it going for so long is the conversation, and there's a lot less of that than there used to be. Blogs have been out of fashion for quite a few years now, and so-called "social media" has a lot to do with that. There was a point where Facebook became really popular, and at least some of the people who used to comment here migrated there. And, I suppose, Twitter and whatever else takes their fancy.
But on the other hand: I like doing it. I have this compulsion to write. And the conversation, though not what it used to be, is still worthwhile. So-called social media doesn't really seem to have a lot of it. I used to see a fair amount of it on Facebook, but as a great deal of it was about politics, people would get into raging arguments. And then a few years ago it seemed that most of them just gave up on that and withdrew. So, somewhat counter-intuitively, blogs, or at least this blog, can still serve that purpose. I say "counter-intuitively" because Facebook and Twitter require creating an account, which they try to insure is really you, and, for the former at least, involve creating a circle of "friends" with whom you can converse, whereas anyone who stumbles across this site is free to comment on it, anonymously if he or she prefers. I can remove comments, of course, and ban persistently obnoxious people, but I've only done the former a few times and the latter never.
So I'm going to stick with it, but with a change. I'm going back to my original procedure, and only post once a week. That does not mean, however, that I'm reviving the Sunday Night Journal. Those posts were little essays that were often fairly clearly planned and carefully written. The weekly post from here on (until or unless I change my mind) will be more casual, perhaps a series of not-necessarily-related remarks: a weekly miscellany. I've already written most of the next one, which I expect to finish up and post this weekend.
My thanks to all who have read and contributed to the blog over the years, both as readers and participants.
In case you're interested, here is the very first post: a review of the last installment of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. I have not watched the new Tolkien-based series on Amazon, and don't intend to. Apart from the question of its quality, fidelity, and so forth, I just don't want Hollywood images crowding out those of my imagination.
Light On Dark Water 
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