Blogging takes dedication, discipline and talent

I've learned that, for me, posting regularly on a blog takes a lot of dedication, discipline, and talent. I'm not one of those folks who can sit down at a keyboard and just type away with their thoughts flowing coherently, with only minor editing needed for publishing. That's not a new revelation to me; in my earlier life as a labor union rep I always struggled writing arbitration post-hearing briefs by their due date. I've always done much better with oral argument than with writing, but still, I do like to write--just as long as it's at my pace. Also, a blog is like writing an arbitration post-hearing brief in that you better have your facts straight. Research, fact gathering and fact checking has eaten up a lot of my time blogging. I must admit, though, that the time I spend on those tasks is exaggerated to a goodly degree because of my becoming distracted when stumbling upon other topics that grab my attention while doing the background work. More discipline here on my part would help in the goal of regular postings, but I'm not there yet.

But the biggest factor in keeping a blog up to date is having the time to do so--and lately I haven't had as much free time as I've enjoyed in the past. For the past two months I've been helping long-time friends remodel an old farm house on their property in Hempstead, TX, a little ranch community of 6,500 that is about a 40-minute ride down the road from me. My friends commenced this project a little earlier this year and it consists of tons of demolition work, shoring up foundation beams, bumping out a few perimeter walls, adding site-built roof trusses and roofing, adding a partial wrap-around porch, converting a front room into a bedroom with a new bathroom, reconstructing a kitchen from scratch, redoing plumbing and electric, new flooring, residing, maybe some HVAC and attic work, ...and the list goes on.

Anyway, barring anything unforeseen, I'll probably continue helping my friends out on this project for the next couple of months, which will also probably mean I won't be doing as much blogging as I'd like. So, if you two regular readers of my blog think it worthwhile, please bear with me and let's see if I can't do better at this blogging stuff.