The next time I start a new blog, I have to remember these rules, because I agree with all of them.

I love reading someone who has a unique voice. Reading blogs written by people so overflowing with passion for something that they want to share it around. Watching someone's exploration of their interests and becoming educated in turn.

I really love good writing (and not infrequently feel regret for the sloppiness of my own blog prose).

(Note to clients: If your Webstrainer campaign is turned off 60% of the time and you're only willing to spend $10/day on internet marketing? Do. Not. Come and whine at me about how poor your results are.)

And an occasional dose of weird? Just my kind of thing. I'll bet you didn't know that about me.

I'm actually thinking of adding another blog to my portfolio. Because what I really like is feeling passionate about something, and I haven't had a new passion in a while. I went over the top on writing and politics. I did OHMIGOD MY BOSS IS SO CRAZY for a year or so (which was, I think more fun for me than for the reader). I did art and knitting in a very small way.

I need a new shtick.

And a new shtick means a new blog. (Think of it as buying a new journal for a new year or a new hobby.)

(Note to clients: Going over my head and writing to my boss and every other boss whose email address you have will not endear you to me. It also won't change what I told you, which was merely the truth, shorn of subjective judgment. I don't know you and I don't care enough about you to waste time making up lies for you.)

Also I need a new blog platform. The sp*mm*rs have found the politiblog and if I leave comments on an article open for more than a week, I get a sp*mflood. It's very annoying to keep having to clean up a blog I'm not really using any more.

I guess I could upgrade from the software I have now, but it's harder to make myself put the effort in when it's just, you know, a blog blog and not an OHMIBLOGPASSION.

I'm feeling very overwrought today, aren't I? Practically 13.

Dum-dee-dum-dee-dum. It's hard to think up a passion, isn't it? It's a pity I burned out on politics before the convention came to town. Shrug. I still care. I just don't believe any more.

"What," I ask the Magic GoogleBall, "Should I feel passionate about?" I click I'm feeling lucky. The Magic GoogleBall lets me down by giving me some kind of writing site for rural kids. In Australia! I already wrote. Maybe it's telling me I should travel?

I haven't traveled a lot in my life. I've been to England. I was just over the Texas border into Mexico for a couple of hours once. I've been just over the border into Canada a time or two. I've visited 20 states, although I can't say I've "seen' them all since a lot of that was business travel. (It might have been more, but I ran out of fingers, toes, and interest in the topic halfway through the sentence.)

Travel requires time, money, and a cigarette, though. (No! No! Hits brain with a big stick. Bad monkey! No nut!)

Time, money, and a destination of interest is what I meant to say. You have to want to go somewhere, then have time to investigate it and read up on it, so you know what you're seeing when you see it. I lack the first two, so we'll table that idea for a while.

Hey! It's 5:00!

I'll think more about it on the way home.