Moving On

July 29, 2008
8:00 AM CST

When I started blogging in 2002, it was intended that this new outlet would be a way for me to polish up my writing skills—I’d taken a long hiatus, having finished Vienna Days in 1996, and Family Fortunes a couple years earlier—and my intention was to provide a place where people could read my stuff, and (I hoped) buy my work.

Nearly 15 million visitors, two website redesigns and three subsidiary websites later, it’s obvious that this thing has gone in a different direction altogether, and here we are.

I’ve always admired the Roman general Cincinnatus. His country was faced with danger, so he agreed to lead the Roman army against the invaders. Then, having soundly thrashed the enemy, he refused any further role in government, and went back to his farm, where he lived quietly and anonymously for the rest of his life.

I’m going back to the farm, metaphorically speaking.

I’ve faced the foe (liberals, gun-fearing wussies and the like) and while I certainly can’t claim generalship, I can certainly claim a fairly significant part in their confusion. Many hundreds, perhaps many thousands of people have become gun owners or rediscovered their forgotten love of shooting, as the Nation of Riflemen concept was born and took root.

National Ammo Day (November 19th) has gone from a small grassroots effort to one which is supported by many thousands of gun owners around the country.

Buy A Gun (BAG) Day, while not of my own invention, has with my enthusiastic support turned April 15th from a dreaded tax deadline to a time when people can celebrate their freedom to keep and bear arms.

People have come to my website having typed “Mauser K98” into the search string, sniffed around at the various posts, essays and articles, and ended up staying for years, infected with the desire to own guns beyond that first old rifle inherited from their grandfather, and which prompted the search in the first place.

The job isn’t over, of course: it never is. Rome would face many more enemies as time passed—but those enemies would be met by different generals.

All of which is a long and verbose way of saying that on November 30, 2008 I will be retiring from blogging. (November, because there’s one more Presidential election to work on, and one more Ammo Day to supervise, before handing over the reins to other, better hands.)

Before anyone gets the wrong idea, let me hasten to stress that this website will not disappear: everything (Gratuitous Gun Pics, Essays, Weekend Women and all other content) will remain at this same address. (And, I should add, I will retain and defend my copyright to all the materials on the website: details are below the fold.) The only difference is that from December 1, 2008, for the first time in a long time, there will be no fresh content, and silence will fall on this corner of the Internet.

So: what am I going to do after November 30th? I’m going back to my first love, writing historical novels of limited appeal and dubious commercial potential, but which will afford me, as did their predecessors, an immense amount of satisfaction in their creation. I may even finish Damn Foreigner, although the keen anticipation I feel for finding the inspiration for a story, researching the milieu and writing quality prose may well suppress the desire to talk about myself.

I wrote a while back that while I was a professional (or even semi-pro) musician, I made up for my musical shortcomings by being dependable—showing up, day after day, night after night, playing my heart out in every performance, practicing as much as needed, and all that.

I’ve been showing up for work every day, with only an occasional interruption in service, for over six years now, and to be frank, I’m kinda tired of it. I’ve fought all the same battles many times, I’ve debated the same arguments many more, and reported on the usual outpouring of stupidity, cupidity and venality from our body politic so many times that it wearies me just to think about it.

I must also point out that my retirement from blogging is not related to any specific cause other than simple exhaustion. It’s not a question of my health, or the health of The Mrs., nor are there Eebil Gubmint Forces or death threats from cranks behind this decision. Especially not a factor is the carping and kvetching from the several Kim-haters, -disparagers and other such twerps out there who constantly insult me or seek every opportunity to try to bring me down, each in their own silly little way, and each for their own insignificant reasons. They’ve always been out there, and I don’t care.

None of that matters.

In other words, I’m not being driven from the field: I just don’t care to play this particular game anymore. When I started this thing, there were a few thousand blogs, and I was probably one of the very first “gun bloggers”, although that was only part of my writing. Now there are thousands of gun bloggers, and millions of blogs, and among those there will be several which can carry on what I had a part in starting, all those years ago.

What will happen between now and December 1st? Not much more than has happened for the past half-dozen years. I’ll show up every day, write about the same stuff with the same fire and passion as I always have, and then I’ll stop.

And just like Cincinnatus, I’ll return to a life of anonymity, privacy, industry and quiet contemplation.

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