The picture is not so much a criticism of myself as much as it is a parody. Posts have been few and far between this summer. This isn’t to say that there hasn’t been interesting things to talk about politically, there have been, but I can tell that I am and have been stretching myself a little thin over the past year and a half, basically since I started MWD. And so I have decided that I need to take a break from the world of political blogging.

There are a variety of reasons for this, and I don’t want to dwell too much on any particular part, but my responsibilities are in more need of my attention at this point than politics. I was in a car accident last march which left me without a vehicle. After buying a new one my monthly car payments have gone up, which means I am working more to make up the difference. The website doesn’t pay my bills, so I had to take one step back this summer. I had to take another step back last spring when I realized that my classes weren’t going to come as easily to me as they once have. It turns out those university professors lean pretty hard on their upper division students, so I have needed to take more time out of my day for reading and studying. I am also seriously considering applying to different graduate schools this winter, and that means that I have the Graduate Record Exams to study for, I have to write an application paper, and I need to carry as much favor as possible with my professors so that I may glean letters of recommendations out of them. This all, as you might expect, takes quite a bit of time.

When I think about how I spent most of the 2008 election cycle, I realize that my “contribution” came from behind the computer screen. While I am the first to acknowledge the strength of the pen (keyboard?), I decided that I would like to get out some more. With all of the above circling in my mind, it was no real surprise that I would want to take some mental health time for myself. I’m spending more time with my girlfriend Liz, and am planning on taking more trips to visit my brother Jeff who goes to school in Lincoln.

The website itself hasn’t performed up to the standards of my initial expectations either. At its height last fall, MWD was getting one hundred hits a day, primarily from Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. But in order to get those numbers, I had to work very, very hard. Multiple posts a day, each one longer and more detailed than the last is a tough pace to keep up. I was hoping to, at one point, sign other people up to write for MWD, thereby expanding it, but that never really materialized.

That said, do not consider MidWest Democrat dead yet, simply in a coma. Eventually I would like to re-launch the website with a new look, but that is probably way down the road. I don’t know when I’m going to create all the time that I would like for this project, but for now, I need to focus on other things.

For everyone else, keep on fighting the good fight.