close one door, I build another

My brother's a professional bassoonist. He's a gifted musician; this has been evident since he was a toddler.p I've never envied him his musical talent, but one thing I've always longed for is something his talent gave him: a purity of focus. I have gotten a lot out of this weblog, but I don't think anyone would ever accuse it of having any concerted focus. Over the past year, I've been trying to figure out how to bring my spready, varied interests under one thematic umbrella. Unfortunately, there's no elegant way to do so: my blog topics contain multitudes and none of the little bastards will go quietly. So, like use of the word "hobo" in a comedic context, excessively decorated cupcakes and pirate chic, the Rage Diaries will be over as of January 1, 2009. http://schmeiser.typepad.com/the_rage_diaries/ will not be updated at all. The main URL for this site, http://schmeiser.typepad.com/ will be resolved to my new, more focused blog project, Filthy Commerce.You readers seem to like the posts about the sinful little business of making, managing, spending and saving money. Just as importantly, I like writing them. And in the past two years, some of the most rewarding conversations we've had in the comments have sprung from posts where we all talked about how we interact with the world of commerce. So from January 1, 2009, on, the blog that lives at http://schmeiser.typepad.com will be focused on how people think about, make and spend money.The topic matter is still pretty broad -- go back through the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle archives and see how often the talk turned to money -- so I'm fairly confident that most of you regular Rage Diaries readers won't really notice much apart from a name change and a lack of comics-related posts. (And if you miss those ... well, get me a gig writing about comics. I am not kidding.)I want to thank all of you readers, and especially you commenters who let me know you were out there. I hope you'll stick around through the next phase of my blogging life!