I'm both surprised and flattered to get a number of concerned emails wondering where I'm at. I guess that's not-too-crazy: I used to post basically daily here, and now there hasn't been a post in almost a week.
So, where am I?
The answer is, I'm looking to do an order-of-magnitude quality improvement in my writing. Putting concepts on more solid ground, making them more actionable, writing in a more service-oriented fashion, covering things from first principles and background knowledge (so someone seeing something for the first time could put it into action right away), etc.
A problem with a lot of my writing in the past was that I wrote strictly about what interested me. This turned out some good pieces, but erratically and with no scope.
This resulted in an amazing regular readership of just absolutely marvelous people here who like to put together patterns and extract general principles from history, science, business, philosophy, etc. Which has been terrific and has greatly enriched my life, and I think a lot of readers and people in the dialog here have made some amazing gains too.
But this place was often closed off to new people. If a stranger wandered in, they often couldn't figure out what was going on.
For instance, the last time I wrote a somewhat definitive and comprehensive post about time tracking was, I think, 2010 or 2011. Since then, my time tracking has evolved a lot, and I reference the concept a lot.
But I never wrote a definitive guide.
Same with the Lights Spreadsheet -- if you read the 15 or so core entries on it and the half-dozen or so commentaries, you could put it all together. But I never wrote a single 2000-3000 word definitive post on how to do it, why to do it, common points of success/failure, etc.
All my writing and work has been very enjoyable and pleasant for me, and I've been so honored and thrilled with the core readership. But at the end of the day, I was only writing what I wanted to write, when I wanted to write it, and thus the work had limited and inconsistent value.
I'm working now on getting away from that and making the pieces go up an order of magnitude in quality, citing sources better, differentiating between idle conjecture and very well-researched and well-tested facts, and so on.
I've finished a couple new pieces in the new format. They're longer, more definitive, I think much more useful.
It's a struggle sometimes; instead of just dashing things off quickly, I have to really outline and think critically. Sometimes my head hurts doing it. I mean, literally, it's pushing me to the threshold of my ability.
But as much as it's a struggle, it's always at least meta-enjoyable to be looking to do better, the times when really flowing in the new style are like an epiphany, and I think the end product will be much more useful to you.
People who come less frequently and who don't want to dig hard to find core reference pieces will have core pillars to stand on and orient themselves. And this should make it easy to share with friends who don't want to dig through lots of pieces to extract principles, but who do want to improve their lives and their thinking.
There was never a perfect time to do this transition, but now is as good as any other point.
As the regulars here know, there had been some stability issues on the software here -- multiple emails going out if you were subscribed (one set of "Test" emails, people got 10 in a row in their inbox, which was unfortunate). Some people couldn't comment, sometimes I couldn't post.
I took that as a metaphorical omen that this is a good time to radically improve the quality of my writing, and to start from ground zero, so to speak. That's why I asked for feedback on what posts have been useful to you. (And, thanks for all of it.)
Getting a basic design and core infrastructure in place on a new domain is taking a little while. Also, the new writing process is tricky -- I can see how my writing is going to get much better and more useful over time, but there's an uncanny valley where things get a little less smooth and a little less natural/conversational as I try to be more thorough. I'm trying to work those kinks out, and I'm feeling like I'm quite close to having things I want to release and share.
I think you're going to love what's coming next. I'm really proud of some of the initial drafts I've done, and though they still don't quite measure up to what I'd like, I see how with a little evolution and practice, I'm going to be able to deliver things along the lines of TSR-quality (the pieces on Washington, Rothschild, Walton, etc) regularly -- as well as just very solid foundational things that can kickstart discussions by themselves.
Thanks again for spending time with me, for all of the excellent dialog, for all of the recent feedback, etc. A lot of changes are coming, changes I'm very excited about that I think will serve you well. Look for those shortly, and you have my gratitude and best regards,
Sebastian