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!
2 comments:
Heh - there hasn't been much political stuff here since I've been following, if asked I would probably not have guessed politics was the main (or at least original) theme of your blogging... Interesting. I hope you do keep posting your thoughts every once in a while, about whatever aspect of life captures you at that particular time. I find your verbal thoughts interesting and often very well nuanced, and like to read them even though they are rare occurances...!
(For a more frequent poster, even I have realised that frequence often impacts on quality - so I'm trying to cut back. I'd rather post better stuff less often, than everyday-bullshit. (Well, some bullshit will of course remain, for sentimental reasons! *s*) But frequency isn't everything!
About Swedish politics... I'm having the hardest time to work up any sort of enthusiasm (let alone trust!) for ANY of the parties or representatives. It's sad, because I do believe in the principle that democracy and the right to vote are privileges that are to be actively pursued... But it's getting increasingly difficult to find something/someone worth my vote. Regardless of ideologies.
But that's just me I guess.
I don't find it that difficult to respect most politicians, they are humans and do their level best most of the time. I fully agree however about the principle, the right to vote and the obligation to actively support this fragile system. History should have taught us by now that democracy is not exactly the normal state of affairs and the alternative is always lurking in the background.
To a certain extent, I guess this is just another aspect of growing old. Gone are the passionate days of Friends and Foes, black and white. Here to stay is a gray-scale reality where the ideological differences are a lot smaller than I used to think. This is an observation often made at the local level. Reality tends to moderate visions and goals. The far left and the far right may after all be able to agree on putting up a new rain-shelter at the bus stop... Such is life.
The correlation between frequency and quality is far from clear, there are many good and highly productive bloggers. Your textual corner of space-time happens to be a very good example. One reason is that when you make observations or write down thoughts about a current state of mind, you tend to relate these bits and pieces to the big picture. This is immensely helpful for the reader and makes the net result so much more interesting. Like a weave of thoughts and observations - many small and sometimes seemingly insignificant - but presented and interpreted in a way which suggests a structure.
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