The last few days have been a bit hectic here. Hopefully the next few will be better. With Christmas fast approaching, I doubt that, but there's always hope (and change hahaha).

After the New Year (or possibly before), you may see some changes in the patterns here at the RWRepublic, including poet frequency and a possible drop in traffic (if you follow that). I have tentatively accepted a position that will probably keep me off-blog for most of the daytime hours that I have lately been using for research and commenting (commenting at other blogs helps drive traffic here). It's not great money, and there's a long drive involved (that doesn't really bother me that much - Sage will tell you that we both had long drives to the building in which we worked together when we met - where we were grossly underpaid), but it is a pretty awesome long-term opportunity that can still put a pretty good dent in the debts that have accumulated over the last several months of unemployment (and lack of income).

Traffic has been great lately. The goal of 1,000 monthly visits has been met and exceeded every month since it's been set - in fact this will likely be the fourth month that will have approached double that (at post time, there are 60 hits to go to 1500 for the month, and there's over a week to go). Traffic isn't why I blog, as you all know, but it would be a lie to say it's not part of the hobby. As traffic increases, the opportunity to monetize increases with it; and that is always something to consider, especially if there's a chance to make extra money with a blog that I already have. Unfortunately, the engine that has largely driven that increase in traffic over the last four months has been comments in the blogosphere, which may not be as useful once the new job starts.

Hopefully, the loyal readership that's come on will continue to be here, and maybe encourage some friends to come by. I'll do what I can to keep things rolling - this blog had 1,000 hits per month through my entire last job (which was a 2-month contract), and the same problems existed there.

The main thing is that, barring unforeseen circumstances, I will be back to work very soon. That is never a bad thing. So maybe traffic cools down a bit - it's not like I'm going away.

The libs aren't THAT lucky!

RWR