Blog, blog, blog -- a thon -- or -- how to recycle electrons and spin one's wheels without a life

I love blogging. But, I love life. When blogging goes over the line, then we have to call the move as 'out of bounds.'

I won't be doing a 24-hour blog-a-thon. Count me "OUT" of that madness. Sure, I've been glued to my keyboard in the past -- for a spell, and I can't spell. Sure, I've pulled many all-nighters too, working on the computer. There was a time in my life when I published books that I would often work all night long for 2 or more days to put a book to bed. Those were the days of PageMaker 1.5 and Quark and LaserWriters that went one page every six minutes it seemed. I'd have four or five days of regular eat-sleep cycles and then crunch for 2-3 days and make serious gains on projects.

Often these projects were 'arts' efforts. Staying up and not getting sidelined was even a treasured passion. I'd feel good in getting the work accomplished and holding the book's pages that were just days ago scratches of a manuscript.

My best crash and burn story was with Kevin DeForrest and his book, The Treasure Within. That was one of my last books. He was an old friend from Illinois and was then coaching swimming at Penn State. He came to our house after the kids were sent home for Christmas and we worked up until Christmas Eve, about 4 days. He left and I knew what was to go on each page and all the chapters were edited. He departed to see his mom in St. Louis. By New Years Day I had 250 copies of his 150 page book on a plane headed with him to the Pacific Swim Coaches Clinic in Napa, California.

The outcomes of the work all-night efforts were NOT blog posts however.

If your going to do the 24-hour thing -- go for it. To each his own. That isn't what I'm about these days. I'm going the other way even.

This blog is going to take a bit of a vacation. We train the house-sitter today on how to care for our cats and old house. Then we hit the road on Monday, after a softball game, to Maine. We'll be gone for a week. I'll try to get to the Wikifest at Harvard's Law School on Friday too.

Later in August I'll be off line for two weeks as we go to Canada for a swim camp, http://www.campchicopi.com. They have dial up. I'll be further offline in the heart of Cottage Country (3-and-a-half hours north of Toronto) than when we went to China. I don't expect blogger to be blacklisted in China, but I'll be with 120 guys on the edge of a lake.

Perhaps I could do a fundraiser -- a blog off! I get paid to NOT talk about a certain topic or else to not blog at all for a spelll.