Where I've been and why I've been there

First off — thank you very much for your emails over the last several months. It’s a warm fuzzy to know that folks care…
And I’m fine. Really I am. I just got tired of using the same old words to talk about the same danged problems and stories all the time, ya know? Another shooting here, another stupid politician there — and after awhile, you realize you’re just repeating yourself.
*yawn*
But of course, that’s not all there was to my disappearance. There’s also the little matter of time — or rather, the lack thereof. Reading and researching, writing and responding, and just generally interacting with the larger blogosphere was taking up an astounding part of my life; there was nothing left for other hobbies. (That’s not strictly true. If I’d so chosen, I could have given up my time with Adorable Child (AC) and Dear Husband (DH), but they might not have appreciated that much.)
Because that’s really all this blog is — a hobby. Nobody’s paying me. My opinions won’t change the world. I don’t even really have anything new to add to the dialogue most of the time. So I decided to spend some time on a few other things… like photography! Unfortunately, I didn’t know very much about it, and it took a great deal of focus (so to speak) to learn the tools and techniques.
Which brings me to the here and now (almost).
I wanted to change the direction of this blog — to bring my photography into this part of my life. I’ve discovered that I can say far more about my personal opinion with an image I shot, without tangling up in verbosity. Beyond that, though, I’d like to write now and again about the art of photography itself — about depth of field, or selective focus, or just an event in my world — and I discovered that I couldn’t easily do that.
No — nobody told me I couldn’t. I just felt awkward. Knowing that everything I publish here goes out into the political blogosphere, or various feed burners, it seemed strange to go so far afield.
Silly silly Polimom!!!
So — this post contains more words than I’ve put online in many months, and it all boils down to this: the blog is changing.
I’ll be using photography to express opinions — many of them political or social, but not all. If you liked Polimom Says because I talked a lot, then you won’t like the new approach. If you have this blog as an automatic feed, you may decide to turn it off. If you think discussions about photographic techniques are boring, you’re going to hate the “new” me.
And that’s okay.
This post, then, is both an explanation and a heads up. I’m going down a much different path, now — and you’re all welcome to walk it with me.