There. I said it.

You may ask why I hold that opinion. Well, I’ll tell you. Upending our family’s lives even for a move across town, while not enitrely unexpected, still caused a disruption in our daily routines. Then there’s the packing, and the unpacking, and trying not to piss off the cats in the process (which we were successful in doing after about a day or so when they started calming down).

On the upside, the new house is great! The thing I like about it the most? My office has a DOOR. Do you know how freakin’ awesome that is? It’s AMAZING! Why? Because now I can literally write uninterrupted for hours on end. No interruptions of high school drama, memes, asking to borrow my car or a cat accidentally unplugging my computer anymore.

So in other words, as we finish up the move this weekend (we’re about 95% finished at this point), we can start unpacking and getting back to either normal or better than normal. This means more content on this website, which I’m probably looking forward to more than any of you are.

Two great stories are in the works. Stay tuned! They’ll be on their way shortly!

As you probably already guessed, I’ve decided to relaunch the Lake County Observer. I’d come to this conclusion a while back, but I’ve had a lot of other things happening since I last wrote on this site before my write-up on Tuesday’s storms.

The reason I stopped writing here last year was because I was going over to another publication in South Lake County and figured the redundancy likely wouldn’t have been necessary. Well, long story short, it didn’t work out. These things happen. I won’t go into details here because it’s not worth doing so. I wish those papers and the parent company well in their future endeavors.

I have taken a full time job at a locally owned convenience store chain. I actually started more as a low-level probationary employee than I was making as editor of three weekly newspapers at my last job. It sounds hard to believe at first, but when you understand where media is going these days, which tends to favor independent content creators, it totally makes sense. Anyone can have a news website (like this one), or a TV show (like on YouTube or Rumble) or a radio show (podcast). There are literally hundreds of thousands or more likely millions of these kind of content creators out there on the interwebs. You can find some sort of media for just about any topic you can think of.

And yet, you’re reading this one. For that, I thank you. Now for some ground rules…

The Observer will be a free publication moving forward. Times aren’t easy for anyone right now, my family and me included. You shouldn’t have to pay to read this or for that matter ANY publication in my personal opinion. I will have a virtual tip jar at some point if you would like to donate, but that’s totally up to you. That money would likely go towards things like DNS services and gas money. If I get enough donations, I may publish a hardcopy collection of my work to give to a couple of local libraries or something, but that would be about it.

I’m not going to get rich off of my writing, and I’m OK with that. I wasn’t going to get rich writing when I working full time in the field, either, so why should that fact be different now? Besides, even in spite of the tragic events that unfolded on Tuesday evening, writing that article up on Wednesday felt GOOD. There was no pressure, and when there’s no pressure, the quality of my work goes up.

Having understood that, it must be likewise understood I’m not going to be able to get to everything. I do have a full time job and that has to take precedence over this page as my wife and I do have a family to support. However, I won’t disappoint you and I’ll still at least try to have something up at least weekly if not more often time permitting.

I’m looking forward to writing for you all again. And as always, feel free to share anything I write here on social media. Thanks for sticking with me!

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