Scanning the ham radio webosphere it’s obvious that radio enthusiasts don’t produce content like in the early internet days. I suppose blogs, then social media became the transitional darlings preferred over static pages. But much of the old content has been abandoned and left to rot. I just visited the home page of one QRP enthusiast who had links to dozens of other low-power sites and following most of these resulted in site not found messages.

It’s completely understandable. The world has moved on from those practices and what has become tiresome for the older generation has become uninteresting to the new. Ain’t no news here. You can count on one hand the hams still churning out daily content, and on two or three hands, if you have a spare, those updating on a weekly basis. It’s certainly not the overgrown digital garden that once thrived in the online ham radio world.

I can’t explain why I’m still writing about ham radio? I know that the preferred method for info exchange has become video, and to a lesser degree, audio. I’ve watched the stats here dwindle from thousands of unique visitors each day twenty-years ago to a couple thousand a month now.

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve thought of quitting the daily grind I might not be rich but my retirement would be much more comfortable. I just get up every morning and type a few hundred words while having coffee and sometimes those collections of morning thoughts end up here. But trust me, I discard twice as much as I publish and ‘you’re welcome’ that I spare you from much of the cruft generated each day.

Despite having deleted blog content regularly and ferociously thru the years there are over 250 posts in the archive and that only covers 2022 and so far in 2023. This comes from my belief that readers desire fresh content and that after more than twenty years, writing has become a daily habit for me. I think of quitting often, or at least slowing down, but I haven’t been able to do either. Yet. Some day. But not yet.

I’ll probably continue writing here for as long as I am able and continue to be fascinated about our hobby. My involvement in ham radio introduced me to my wife and impacted my entire career. Most of my friends are connected via amateur radio and I have enjoyed every moment of my involvement. The only slow down in output that I can imagine would come while working on other ham radio related writing projects. I have always imagined that during my retirement I would write books about ham radio. Some fictional, some not.

This has been an absolutely terrible year of personal upheaval for us. Not just the recent deaths in the family, but also the changes that come from moving to a new home while also unloading my Dad’s home and our previous domicile. It’s been a lot of chaos and sadness to endure, but I have reasons to hope (your thoughts and prayers!) that we will survive all this and a few months from now will be able to relax and enjoy the rest of our lives.

It’s our third and final act, but it’s just getting started.