Kick-Starting My Blog Again!

Next January I won't have to think too hard to come up with a New Year's Resolution. I can just use this year's. My resolution was to post daily to this blog. I know lots of other people do this, and I gave myself an easy way to succeed by saying that just posting a link and a short blurb would suffice, with longer more thoughtful entries to be added when time permitted I had a perfect record all through January. But that was a long time ago. Indeed January seems like distant past for reasons other than my blog. It was the beginning of a semester that presented more stress and worry about schools and finances than I can remember in my life, and frankly that's a long time. All during fall 2010 we were told that the State of Texas was in great financial shape, due to the wise conservative leadership of "Governor" Rick Perry. He managed to defeat a good and decent man, Bill White, to gain another tem as governor. Almost immediately we were told that calculations were incorrect and that our state had joined just about everybody else in hard financial times.

A combination of factors kept me from keeping up my blog but I think one was pure discouragement. It is hard not to feel beat down when your hard work is devalued and your profession is under fire. The strong anti-higher education mood in Texas, on top of the radical cuts to K-12 schools, made for a gloomy outlook on my part. Beyond that, I was not feeling up to par and was barely keeping up with my responsibilities as a professosr and department chair. But enough of that! Crying over spilt milk or oil or Bluebell ice cream or whatever we are currently spilling in Texas will not make things better.

Thus I am officially kick-starting my blog today. Will I be posting every day as per resolution? Well I hope to come close! And so, for the 3rd time in 2011, I am instigating a do-over and hoping to make the resolution stick this time. This entry is long and way too much about me so I will close with a cool link. I shared this one via Twitter and Facebook earlier this week, but if you haven't seen it, take time to enjoy. It does put my piddling blog into perspective. The title is The Scale of the Universe and it lives up to this lofty title:
http://uploads.ungrounded.net/525000/525347_scale_of_universe_ng.swf