One often-quoted saying, which I have used as a title of a blog post in the past is “the only constant is change.” (I’m not going to link it here, as it’s not really that relevant.) And such it is here. These are big changes and those left who actually read this blog should know what is happening. That’s why this verbiage is posted here and not on another blog of mine, where rants like this normally go.

The landscape is completely different now than what it was approximately five months ago when I soft-launched this blog. It’s different than it was three months and change from when I wide-launched. I’m not going to lie; I had hoped to have a much larger readership than I wound up with.

And then it hit me. Remember the infamous last lines from Joshua, the computer in WarGames? “The only winning move is not to play. [pause] How about a nice game of chess?” And maybe, given some of my motivations, that was the winning move, of sorts. But I’m in the game, so short of withdrawing (taking the blog down entirely), I think my winning move is a complete change of mission and focus. It will take me a few days to update the Facebook page and the about page to reflect where this project of mine is going now.

I have serious doubts people take the LOVIEE feature seriously. I doubt I will do another holiday special LOVIEE again; that was way too much energy for very little reward. And I have received almost no feedback. No “nice list” or “wow, this little blog of yours is coming along great.” No retweets that I’ve noticed.

So this is the new rationale:

• I’m dropping “The best of” in favor of some other tagline to be determined. It doesn’t fit at all with the new direction.

• The LOVIEE feature more or less reflects where I’d spend my time given unlimited money, transportation, and multiplicity (i.e. if I could clone myself I’d be everywhere on the list). To be honest, for some weeks this is what the weekly LOVIEE was.

• The LOVIEE feature might even get renamed. At the time I was proud of my stroke of genius. Now, I’m not even sure how much I really like Houston any more.

• The recaps are more or less a memoir I’m sharing with the rest of you. If you guys like them, great. If not, well, maybe you should read professional reviews instead. I’m not for everyone. I’m a lot like the old MTV slogan: “MTV: we’re not known for our good taste.” And so it is with me. I love America, I love the First Amendment, and by all means, if my style of event recaps bore you, vote with your keyboard and mouse.

• I no longer feel bound by a desire to try to attract readers. If I get more readers, great. If I lose a few, well, I pay by the byte, so it saves me a few pennies here and there if a few people leave. (I do have some level of fixed expenses charged by my host, due to increase sometime soon.)

I haven’t even decided what I’m going to do about the yet-to-be-launched “On the Horizon” feature. I’ve drawn a graphic and everything. I may just show off the graphic, once, to show what it would have looked like if anyone actually cares, and then bury the concept unused.

I do regret it a little bit if this disappoints anyone. But these changes are necessary to keep this blog fun for me. I’d rather make an effort to put the fun back into it than just shut it down completely. Maybe this will teach me there is no fun to be had in it at all. Maybe I’ll get new readers that enjoy watching the cyberspace equivalent of a train wreck. I don’t know what the future holds, but just because I don’t know what is on the other side of a door does not mean I refuse to open it.