I hate to run a blog where all the posts have apologies for not blogging. Unfortunately, that’s what I seem to have. I like having a blog more than I like writing in it (or maintaining it, if I can judge by the nag box in the Wordpress dashboard).

So here’s my resolution: One post, every month, for the rest of 2009. More is good, but not expected.

I’ll try what the pro bloggers suggest, even if it gives me hives: a schedule. *gasp!* Yes. I’ll prepare something in advance and post it, oh, around the 10th of the month.

Look for something new here then. I mean it this time.

I was going to write about how I’ve been else-net all this time and am trying to start again here, but I’ve written that before. Including two months ago.

I’ve struggled for a long time — the consequence of which is the dearth of posts here — about how to present myself online. That’s based in a belief that my natural offline self isn’t fit for public consumption, and that what I have to present elsewhere is the radio edit, so to speak. And despite the fact that this blog has been mostly silent for two years (twice as long as it was active), I thought the peoples expected Shakespeare. What peoples were still reading, anyway.

But the truth of the matter is that this site is mine, to do with as I please, and if I’m done talking about Shakespeare? My seven RSS readers can choose to keep reading or stop. I don’t have to edit myself.

That’s been a big revelation to me.

So has the dwindling pull of the internets. Matt and I went to see our families in Michigan over Thanksgiving, and I was surprised to find that I didn’t itch to be online, nor did that itch necessarily return when we got back home. Catching up became a chore, not a treat. And I’m not into continuing things I used to like when I stop liking them.

I can’t tell what the future holds. I’m kinda frustrated with the number of “starting on Monday, things are gonna change” posts I’ve made here. But I am determined to put down roots elsewhere online. Eventually, those roots will take hold.

While the big story of the day is how long the lines are at polling stations, there was no line when I went to vote at 10:30 this morning, despite my scarf and book and other preparations. Walking to the poll place, voting, and walking back home took less than half an hour, but there was a line when I left and I heard there was a line stretching around the building earlier this morning. I’d say about 20 voters and another 20 poll workers were in the building when I was there.

It was wonderful and exciting to see so much support for Obama, talk to so many people who were on the way to or from the polls, hear about record voter turnout in spite of possible problems with machines or ballots or whatnot. Maryland uses Diebold touch-screens, unfortunately. I hear Florida’s gone to a Scantron system with a paper trail.

Today I’m stuck at my desk, so I’m watching CNN.com, the Shapely Prose open thread, the Making Light open thread for burning off nervous energy, and William K. Wolfrum of Shakesville bravely liveblogging Fox News’s coverage. The excitement has died down this late in the afternoon, when many people have already voted and are busy taking care of the day’s business, and many others haven’t gotten to the polls yet.

This morning I was caught up in it, too, and wore my “I Voted!” sticker and Obama button as long as I could.

Tonight I’ll be parked on the couch with a glass of wine, watching results come in. Come on, Obama landslide!

Welcome to the latest and greatest incarnation of lastsyllable.net. Things have changed in the blogosphere since I stopped writing in it — I haven’t quit writing entirely; I just tend to hang out else-net — and again, I’m hesitant to return. The proper tone of accessibility, vast learnings, and not too much navel-gazing is a difficult one to nail on the first several tries.

According to a Wired post by Paul Boutin, I’m supposed to let the blog die and go write on Twitter and Facebook. Twitter hasn’t captured my interest, and on Facebook I mostly like to change my status message and play Tetris Friends. And as John Scalzi pointed out when he linked Boutin’s post, his advice applies if you’re only in the blogosphere to get hundreds of readers or make a big splash on Technorati and similar. I’m not.

I have to admit that my original experiment with this blog was a success — turns out I wasn’t interested enough in Shakespeare as a field to sustain writing about it for a very long time. I probably saved myself thousands of dollars in grad school tuition by starting this blog. However, I had a lot of fun writing about Richard III during the Blogathon (those posts are now readable on one page), and I’d like to do it again with other plays.

The Shakespeare blogosphere is still pretty small, though I’m pleased to discover an ongoing Shakespeare Blog Carnival. Watch for an upcoming post listing Shakespeare blogs of the moment, as well as updated sidebar links. In the meantime, I’ll be easing back into the literary blogosphere through the book How to Read Literature Like a Professor. I expect to quarrel with parts, depending on author Thomas Foster’s critical perspective, so it should be at least as entertaining as descriptions of my daily minutiae.

I got into the intensive!! I called this morning and there was at least one opening. I threw together my application package, involving an embarrassing mental blank on my end — I had a lead role, but forgot the name of the play, and had to write a separate email to include it after I called around to find someone who remembered — but I’m all set and will be attending tonight!

It looks like we’ll be working heavily with a monologue, and I’ve chosen the full “Tomorrow” speech. The monologue didn’t have to be something we’d actually be cast in, it’s the speech I know the best, and one I’ve been struggling with how to perform. So it seems I’m about to find out, in excruciating detail.

I haven’t acted in anything for at least five years. I hope I don’t embarass myself in front of everyone else.