I imagine many of you were surprised to find an email update from Inside, Looking Out yesterday. I was too. Yeah, it’s been nearly a year since my last post, eleven months to be exact. Apathy, work, and a failure to gain traction in a competitive blogosphere contributed to the long drought. And I didn’t think my heart was in it any more.

After a few years of actively blogging I realized I didn’t have the mettle to go up against the likes of Joe.My.God and Towleroad and others, who were already doing a fabulous job, and I might add are tremendous assets to the LGBT community. Simply parroting them was no way to distinguish ILO, and the three hour head start of many of the east coast blogs didn’t help either.

I used to joke that I was a small fish swimming in a small pond full of big fish. Occasionally I’d get a nibble. Once or twice enough traffic to take the site down (thanks Carrie Prejean). Sometimes I’d get lucky and more popular blogs would cross-post or even feature one of my original posts.

This little fish was never eaten. It simply grew tired of swimming.

Which brings us to yesterday. And the new post.

Lately I’d been feeling the itch to start blogging again. I looked back at the early years of ILO when posting was definitely more sporadic, but more personal. Less chore.. more fun. I need to go back to that. At least for a while.

So I started off, not surprisingly, with a review. I used to do quite a few of those. There will be more of that and more personal/essay type posts as well. There will be less breaking news, unless it’s really juicy, or really relevant. I’ve also got a couple of niche-oriented blogs in the hopper, and I’ll be posting more about those too.

I know some of you will abandon ILO. Two already have. And that’s fine. For those who stick around, I hope to make it worth your while. Until next time.