Time to stop blogging about blogging

Time to stop blogging about blogging and start blogging about stuff.  I’ll start talking policy soon but today I wanted to share a story I told a small group recently at a dinner celebrating the impending wedding of my good friend Patrick Rose.  

When I first ran for the Legislature, and for the next 6 years, people I didn’t know would often start conversations with me as if they knew me.  Sometimes it took more than 20 minutes of me faking as is if I knew what they were talking about before I figured out that they thought I was Patrick.  At some point in the conversation they would finally mention Dripping Springs, or some bill he was carrying, and I would finally realize that it wasn’t a failure of my memory, I genuinely didn’t know this person.

I proudly admit there is a strong resemblance between us.  I proudly admit it because he’s 11 years younger and a lot better looking than me, so every time people confused me for him I took it as a great compliment.  (For the same reason, I’m pretty sure Patrick found it annoying every time someone confused him for me - though he was always a good sport about it.)

Shortly after I was first elected, a woman introduced herself to me at a reception and told me “All my friends have told me I need to meet you, that you’re the smartest member of the Texas Legislature.”

Easy for me to accept that statement at face value, so, I greedily asked to know who these admirers of mine were.  She threw out some names I’d never heard before.  Then she mentioned someone who really surprised me, because I’d known him for years and we had never liked each other.  At all.  

So I said, “Really?  He said something nice about me?”

And she said, “Oh, yeah, his exact words were:  Patrick Rose is the smartest member of the Texas Legislature.”

So I said, “Well you tell him, from me, Patrick Rose, I said he’s a no-good-S.O.B.”

Profoundly satisfying experience.


More thoughts on this blog…

It’s been five days since my first post, which suggests I might not be up to this challenge I’ve set out for myself.  Have had a thousand thoughts I’ve wanted to share on this blog in the intervening five days, but just never had the time to sit down and write them.  

What makes it even harder to post consistently and frequently is my goal to keep this blog from being anodyne political blather.  I said in my first post that the only guaranteed audience for this blog is the opposition researcher working for my next political opponent.  That said, if this blog is worth doing (which it probably isn’t), it needs to be a forum for real political issues.

There’s a second way this blog could get me burned.  I’m probably going to talk a lot about my family.  Besides oppo researchers, the other likely reader of this blog is my wife.  I’m sure I’ll write something here that gets me in trouble at home.  Especially if I’m really committed to not being anodyne.

(That said, Happy Anniversary to my wife of seven years today!)

(And, so much for not being anodyne.)

But I appreciate the outpouring of supportive messages from those of you who have already become avid readers of this blog.  I must have gotten at least two of them.  

Today is our first day of real debate on the House floor.  We’re adopting the rules that will govern procedure in the Texas House for the remainder of this session.  I could probably post something not-anodyne about it, but not being anodyne does not necessarily mean it will be interesting.

This blog is a terrible idea

No one is more surprised than I am to find myself launching a blog. 

Politicians keeping a blog – or tweeting, or otherwise oversharing their momentary musings – is a terrible idea, politically speaking. 

I know there’s a lot of hype around social media and politics, and some if it is well-deserved (though not all of it). But if you’re not running for President, some of this stuff just doesn’t scale down very well.  I’ve always said social media would destroy more political careers than it would enhance.  Thus far, I’ve generally been proven right.

Reasons this blog is a terrible idea:

  • Probably no one will read it;
  • Scratch that - one person will definitely read it:  the opposition researcher for my next political opponent;
  • I have not noticed that the Internet is generally lacking in content; 
  • I don’t really have time for this; 
  • I have always said politicians should talk less and listen more, and that is especially true in my case;
  • I will almost certainly say things I will later regret.
So why am I doing this?
Mostly, it’s an itch I kind of want to scratch.  Plus it might be fun.  If it’s not fun, I’ll probably let it die, so don’t get too attached to it.  (As if…)

Being a member of the minority party in the lower house of the state legislature has all the frustrations one might imagine.  So another purpose of this blog might be catharsis.  We’ll see.

I’m tagging this post with all the topics I hope to write about - even though this initial post isn’t really about any of them.  It’ll give you an idea of what I’ll be writing about, which will give you an idea of whether to come back.  (How did you get here, anyway?)  I’m sure it will evolve over time.  Or just quietly disappear.  I’m really not optimistic.

By the way, I have no idea what I’m doing.  I’m using Tumblr for the first time and have no idea what half of these buttons mean (like the box on my screen right now that says “let people photo reply”…what does that mean?)  And why am I asking you questions?   I don’t even think Tumblr allows you to post comments.  

I’ll get this figured out eventually, but have some patience.  
And no, I don’t need to be reminded of my derogatory opinions about Twitter.  I still kind of think I’m right about that.  But four years, billions of dollars, and trillions of tweets later, I’m open to the possibility that I might have been wr-wr-wr-wr….not exactly right.
We’ll see.  Meanwhile, I think I’ve enabled this blogging platform to post stuff to twitter, so I guess now I’m tweeting.  Who’d have thunk?

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