As bloggers know, keeping up the site day-after-day is a lot of work. And as regular readers may have surmised, finances have been stretched wee bit thin around here while waiting for the apartment to sell, so I’m working on several new fronts to staunch the outward flow. This is one.

Blog donations – also called tip jars – are controversial. Some people abhor them as begging. Others see them as legitimate revenue generators for the effort involved in producing a blog.

After some thought and Google research about it, I’ve chosen to think of a donation link as fundraising for Time Goes By. I spend a lot of time researching aging and its related issues. I pay for the Typepad service, annual domain registrations, and I spend too much money on journals, research papers and books which, when they turn out to be useless, are of course unreturnable. (It has long been an irritant that if a toaster is defective, I can get my money back, but not for a poorly researched or badly written book.)

Don’t take this as a complaint. I've had a lot of fun and learned a lot over 45 years or more working in radio, television and on websites as a professional dilettante – a generalist paid to know a little about a lot and not much about one particular thing. I envied those who had a passion, who made themselves expert out of deep, personal interest in one topic. be it butterflies or politics. At last having found my passion in the topics and issues surrounding aging, I relish every moment I put into this blog.

In checking out the donations/tip jar controversy, I discovered that along with advertisements and sponsors, a few of the big-name bloggers actually support themselves in this manner. Kottke does it and so have Atrios, Andrew Sullivan and good god – even The National Review has a tip jar, though its lefty counterpart, The New Republic does not. Make of that what you will.

Time Goes By blog traffic doesn't approach those blogs and websites, so I do not expect to support myself with donations. But it might make a dent in some of the blog-related expenses. If anyone reading this is among those who find donations/tip jars abhorrent, that’s okay – just please don’t flame me about it. I’m too busy researching and writing about getting older to either defend it or respond.

I value every one of you who reads and comments at Time Goes By which - out of our collective effort, is becoming a rich resource of thoughts, ideas and information about getting older - and donations are your personal choice, although surely appreciated. As I read somewhere while looking into this blog issue, “it’s nice if someone [who finds value in Time Goes By] pays without being required to.”

If you are inclined to donate, you may do so by clicking this link or the one at the top.