Capitulation

Two years ago, while enduring sunsets at 4 p.m. along the Kentish Riviera and a successful grassroots efforts to make an anarchist's breakthrough track from 1992 the top song the week of Christmas, I began work on a novel approach to connecting everyday Missourians with their already approachable state representatives and senators in Jefferson City. Over the course of 27 months, over 35 lawmakers submitted their weekly capitol reports and various news releases for publication in Missives from Missouri.

Unfortunately, as I am now in the second year of my full-time radio job (and by full-time, I mean 60+ hours of news writing, copy editing, Cool Editing (I'm not bothering to upgrade to Audition), driving to and from council meetings, running the board during high school ball games, even getting to call some ball games, touring battlefields and on and on), time has gravely diminished to the point where maintaining Missives has become impossible to keep current.

It is with grave reluctance and disappointment that I announce that I am discontinuing updates on Missives. While a novel concept and one I enjoyed performing for much the past two years, the time and incentive required to maintain it has proven insufficient to warrant its continuation. (And if such incentive or marketability were to come up, I am very much open to the idea.)

Missives helped pull me from a dark moment in my life. My return from England was far from ideal, and while I had the greatest support system in my family anyone could ever ask for (and a job interview a week later at a station in the Lead Belt), I was far from confident in myself and felt useless. Just by contributing those snippets to the political discussion in our state I began to regain that confidence. And while I was a sandwich delivery driver, I kept my skills and focus honed on this task.

I'm amazed by the effort that many in the state blogosphere continue to contribute: first and foremost John Combest, whose headline aggregations are now in their second decade. Joplin's Eli Yokley has also been doing great work with PoliticMO. Indeed the list can go on and on with Randy Turner, Jason Rosenbaum, partisans on the left, partisans on the right, etc. etc. It takes a great devotion and stamina to stay focused on your craft, as does a willingness to risk one's investment of time and money, and most importantly, faith in yourself.

However, I can claim a minor victory: since starting this blog, increased interest has been paid to weekly columns. In this session, sign-up buttons have appeared on each state representative's page and state senators' columns now appear under their media section. Several other blogs have also taken to posting weekly reports, contributing these two cents to the political discussion. Of course, Missives took some of the legwork out.

I'll continue to read reports as they come in, and will likely weigh in on some from time to time in The Missouri Expatriate. And again, I'd love to bring this back up. But for now, it's time to dial things down and stick with making occasional comments from the sidelines of Missouri's 118th County.