Time Goes By Takes a Sabbatical

As the headline indicates, there is no Elder Music today.

I started planning Time Goes By in the summer of 2003. I wasn’t posting yet, but it took all my free time (I was still working then) for two or three months planning what the blog would be, creating the design, layout, general look-and-feel, and tweaking the code until it was just right.

Soon thereafter, I was laid off work and spent one year making employment search my full-time job and when that failed, another year preparing my New York home for sale, looking for a new one in Portland, Maine, and making the move, at last, in June of 2006.

In all these years, I’ve never taken more than a week at a time off from the blog and rarely that. I’m feeling a bit weary, stale and in need of refreshing my mind. Not that there isn’t a lot of research and reading to do and plenty to write about – I have a list of dozens of stories I want to do. But I’m supposedly retired, damn it, and have no idea what I would do faced with a period of unstructured time with no daily obligation.

So I’m taking off the next two weeks. I won’t be traveling and I’ve made no plans beyond a stack of books I haven’t found time to read and a movie or two I want to see. Maybe I’ll take a couple of days to paint the dining room. Or maybe I won’t.

For the interim, I have collected from hither and yon a fabulous group of original guest posts from elderbloggers along with a couple of columns from regular TGB contributors and some other goodies to entertain, instruct and amuse you while I’m absent. I know you will give the writers the same attention and contribute the same thoughtful, funny and compelling comments you so graciously leave on my own scribblings.

And if not, I’ll be checking in to urge you on.

The Elder Storytelling Place will also appear, as usual, five days a week, so please continue to send your excellent stories. It’s not like I’m going to shut down the computer and email, and I look forward to whatever you come up with next, as I always do.

Elder News, Elder Music, Crabby Old Lady, Ollie the cat and I will return in our regular places in two weeks and who knows, maybe I’ll think up some new features while I have a rest.

Since I won't be at Time Goes By for the day of the the most extraordinary inauguration in my lifetime, here is a video of all 44 presidents. (Hat tip to Melinda Applegate) [3:58 minutes]