Future Directions In Blogging

As the snow falls, I gaze out my window at the city below. Weston Road and the Humber Valley lay hidden beneath a fresh, crisp blanket of snow. I'm back home in Toronto, enjoying a morning coffee and toke. Sitting with my laptop, listening to Beatle tunes. My thoughts floating on the wispy clouds of steam and smoke, languorously curling from my finger tips. 

I'm bracing myself for the long, cold winter ahead. There's been a sharp fall spike in our Covid numbers! Another dangerous new variant too!

Last spring, the pandemic hit home hard. It became quite real for us. We were horrified by the 37 cases and 5 deaths, here in our high-rise building. [Blog]

My wife Janet and I got our vaccine shots. Then had a safe summer in the city and out at the lake. Enjoying a welcome if not cautious reunion, with family and friends. We had high hopes that the worst was over. But now? 

My thoughts turn inward, as I light up another bowl of hash. I'm posting again, after not writing here on my blog site for a long while. I was just too busy living life again.

Mind you, I always write. If not here, then somewhere else. Writing is just what I do.

Recently, I wrote a whole whack of political stuff. Basic agitprop. Agitate. Educate. Organize. That sort of thing. It was edited, then posted elsewhere for another audience, under a group nom de plum, for an excellent cause close to home. 

We created quite the shit storm! The less said the better perhaps, discretion being the better part of valour.

Suffice to say, I had a lot of fun. It was very refreshing. I hadn't written for anybody but myself in quite awhile. The writing just flowed. 

Sometimes it seems like my site has become so focused on cannabis activism and social justice, my 2 favourite themes, that I feel somewhat pigeon holed as a writer, always writing about the same thing.

Of course, they are great causes to write about! Very popular too! This year my site reached 2 million hits! 

It was a personal milestone of sorts. It's truly been a very long strange trip from my Kulture Kult Ink 'zine back in the eighties to the Latest Edition blog you that are reading now. I am so honoured that my blogs are even being read. [Blog]

Still, I've decided to stop posting two of my regular features; "Oh Cannabis" and "Teachers Free Speech News", for now at least.  

I've decided to focus on the Twitter editions for both instead. It's a lot less work. Easier to keep up to date. Lotsa fun too.

When I retired from teaching, I thought I'd left the daily grind behind. But now I need to free my headspace up some more, by making this blog site less rigid and time consuming for me as a writer. I want to be able to follow my writing muse more freely, wherever it may go. Otherwise, blogging is a pretty harsh mistress indeed.

Come what may, there are still over 10 years of news and views archived here on my site. Lots and lots of history and politics, as it happened; local, national and international. Our Ontario teacher movement. The Canadian legalization struggle. Toronto life. The Ford brothers here. Trump in the states. [Blog]

Forget history and we are doomed to repeat it! The archives remain. In addition to whatever else I might write in the daze ahead. Life goes on ....

My next few blogs will provide you with a readers guide to my future directions in blogging here on the Latest Edition site, for my blog archives and the new, improved, online Twitter editions of "Oh Cannabis" and "Teacher Free Speech News and Views"!

Stay tuned! 

David C