Nineteen Years of Masson’s Blog

My writing here is sporadic at best, and I even forgot the November 15th anniversary; but this blog is still sputtering along after nineteen years.When I started this thing, George W. Bush had just won his second term. Indiana Democrats were ending their 16 year control of the Governor’s mansion and beginning what will be at least a 20 year stretch in the wilderness. I was the father of a one year old and expecting a second child. They are now in college. I was five years into a job with a firm in Lafayette and five years removed from a stretch working for Indiana’s Legislative Services Agency. I’m now in my 25th year working for Hoffman, Luhman & Masson, and LSA is a distant memory. I’ve done good blogging from time to time. However, some of what I wrote makes me cringe where it was glib, snarky, and reductive — hallmarks of the social media which killed the blogging impulse. It seemed fun at the time, but too much of it is corrosive. Probably what I’m most proud of posting was my Bicentennial series where I wrote something like 115,000 words on the subject of Indiana history over the course of 2015-2016.

In any case, here we go into year 20. As Tennyson said:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.