This feels a bit odd. After having a heavy online presence for more than a dozen years, I have finally decided that I really need a blog.

Here’s the history: Since 1999, I have posted and moderated on several firearms discussion boards (and I still moderate on The Firing Line). I have been actively involved in several different email lists over the years—yes … people still do use email. I have a fairly big following on Facebook, including a personal page and a Cornered Cat page. I tweet, though not as often as I should. I have an email newsletter. In 2003 or 2004 (like I can remember?), I created the Cornered Cat website, which isn’t really a blog even though many of my internet friends have graciously linked it in their blogrolls. In fact, I’ve done just about everything that people do online to communicate with each other, except blog.

So why a blog, and why now?

1. Facebook won’t keep working for me forever. Oh, I intend to keep posting there as long as it continues to be a good way to reach more people, but the powers that be keep changing the settings. One recent tweak made it so that only a small fraction of my posts will ever be seen by people who have Liked my page. Fb apparently wants me to pay to “promote” my posts as a form of advertising. To be clear, I don’t blame Fb for trying to make a buck—I’m a capitalist and proud of it, baby!—but I also don’t have the resources to play that game. Also, let’s be honest: I tend to write long posts, and Fb just isn’t set up for that.
2. More links, please! I love helping good people meet each other, and want to do more of that. Although I usually reference the websites I am reading and thinking about each day, I also think it’s nice to have a proper blogroll so that you can find those folks even if I haven’t talked about their work in awhile. In the early days, I had a “Link Farm” page with quick blurbs about various interesting places on the web, but I soon found that nobody ever read that page. Perhaps adding a blogroll will help that.  (If you would like your blog featured on my blogroll here, please leave a note in comments. I’ll check it out.)
3.  More interaction with people. Translating the website to WordPress makes it possible for me to get immediate feedback on sections of articles as I’m thinking through ways to present the concepts to people.

So that’s the rundown. My intention is to use this blog as a way to refine my thoughts for the “real” articles I’m writing for various publications and for the Cornered Cat site proper. I hope it helps me connect with more people, more directly. We’ll see how it goes.