2009-12-26

five years later

Swedish Commissioner Margot Wallström is stepping down after five years at the forefront of the European Union. (Ten, actually, but the most recent five years as First Vice President.) Prime Minister Persson appointed her and since the two of them are known to get a long about as good as... well, folks who don't get along terribly well... there was a lot of speculation about his getting rid of her from the domestic scene. Be that as it may, she has been a great Commissioner - effectively helping promote openness and as a side-effect contributing to a more positive view of the Union back in Sweden and throughout Europe.

Her retrospective blog post looking back at these five years got me started thinking about my own humble presence in the world of web logs. I started writing in February 2005, also five years ago. One key driver was an interest in politics from a conservative perspective. Finding your own party in opposition creates energy and a passionate urge to make your point. Then - all of a sudden and when enough people have successfully been making their points - your party is in fact forming a government! Not having PM Persson to kick around anymore plus the disillusion which comes from realizing that your party will in fact not deliver a lot of what you had been hoping for can effectively dampen the political drive and so I find myself now writing about entirely different things - or not at all.

My posts are few and far-between and that doesn't bother me, I have never accepted the idea that one has to keep writing constantly regardless of whether one actually has anything to say or not. Updating infrequently was a nuisance in the old days when the reader used a static bookmark and had to randomly probe and visit to see if anything had been written. These days we subscribe to a feed so anyone can see if there's new content to be read at the moment without having to visit first.

Now we're heading into an election year again and I'll gladly leave that particular scene to others. I may however occasionally have something to say about risk, photography or life itself. Or something else - we do change as we grow older, you know. So feel free to bear with me and stay tuned for another year. Have a happy one!
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