One of the great things about issuing yourself a challenge is that you can periodically review your progress or simply think a little bit about the past, present, and future.

I've challenged myself to post seventy times between Tuesday, July 26th, and December 31, 2011.

I see the high point of my blogging activity was 2006. I had 238 posts that year. That's nearly a post every weekday. The low point was 2010, where I managed a paltry 39 posts. That's fewer than one post a week.

I can see that my decline really began in the late spring of 2008. If it hadn't been for the election in the fall of 2008, I'd have struggled to distance myself from 100 posts. Outside of October and November 2008, which accounted for 56 of my posts that year, I had trouble breaking single digits for most of the year. Except for Oct and Nov, I didn't break 20 for any other single month in 2008.

The major reason for my decline, I think, is that I -- hopefully, temporarily -- moved from DC in fall of 2008. I knew I was moving in the spring of 2008, and so I had some trouble keeping my mind in the business of blogging. Although I don't write often about DC-specific topics, I have always viewed my blog as part of the DC blogosphere and linked very closely to that aspect of my life.

I'm still connected to the District. I'm still looking to return physically as well as mentally to our little inland colony.

Maybe I'm keeping this blog alive because it keeps me looking at other DC blogs.

Of course, it might also be that I'm just fed up again with all the BS the right wing and corporatist politicians are disseminating through the all-too-acquiescent media.