As is probably obvious from my lack of posts, I’m taking a break (or have been taking a break) from this blog. It’s been a busy couple of months, with some ups and downs. Been reading and thinking a fair bit, about various things, but haven’t been motivated to mention particular articles/books or write down my thoughts here with any sort of regularity. I guess it’s part of a process of trying to figure out the best way to post here, and about what.

I can’t post about work-related articles here, which is what I spend most of my week reading and thinking about. And it’s easier to just tweet links to interesting reads about science, journalism, and other random things, rather than blog about them (Although I’m also careful what I tweet, even though my views do not represent PNAS or NAS in any way). There have been many times when I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier for this to be a Tumblr, as there have been things I’ve wanted to reblog. But between being careful of what I write, and not wanting to write without having something meaningful to say, I haven’t found too many reasons to blog lately (although sometimes the public nature of it is also a deterrent, making me think I should just have a journal. Or write on this blog but keep the posts private).

I certainly had an active end of the year though–I went sky-diving (for only the second time), drove a Ferrari F430 on a track in Vegas, and went for a 5-day hike on remote unmaintained trails in the North Rim of the Grand Canyon (I missed going to a gun range my some friends and firing exotic weaponry, which would have been the exclamation point on my “James Bond” month…). I also traveled a fair bit in 2012, visiting some new places and a lot of old ones–I went to San Diego, Irvine, Boston, Vermont, New Orleans, Hawaii, New York, the Grand Canyon, Vegas, and a few others closer to DC or that I can’t remember at the moment.

I’m currently reading the final book of a fantasy series that I began in middle school. I’m about a 100 pages from the end of a series that has lasted probably around 14,000 pages, survived the death of the original author, and that I’ve been reading for more than half my life..I can’t imagine the sense of closure I’m going to feel when I finally find out how it all ends! Just thinking about that is staggering, especially thinking back to how young I was when I read the first book, and everything that’s changed in my life since.

And looking back at 2012, I felt like I’ve been achieving a similar sense of closure with other aspects of my life, doing things that I’ve been meaning to do forever but never got around to. Someone even asked me if I had a bucket list–I certainly didn’t plan it that way, things just sort of happened, or fell into place.

Anyway, just thought I’d do a short wrap-up of the end of 2012, given that I haven’t been blogging much, and expect my blogging to continue to be infrequent in 2013, at least for the foreseeable future…but I do plan to keep thinking about what I want to do with this blog, and what would be the most worthwhile use of it. I hope to figure that out sooner rather than later. 🙂