THANKS to all the people who sent inquiries regarding my health, encouragement to get better, donations, etc. I’m okay, though I still have the cough and still feel kind of crappy. But I think the antibiotics are working.

I took time off — and stayed pretty light in blogging even today — because James Lileks’ remark about being a “public utility” hit a little close to home. In truth, I’ve been feeling a bit like that for a while. It’s nobody’s fault — if you pass out the free ice cream (another Lileks phrase) regularly, people will tend to line up for it in advance, and even to rattle their spoons against their bowls a bit when it doesn’t appear as scheduled. Nonetheless, it starts to feel like work when that happens. As Tom Sawyer discovered, work consists of whatever a body feels obliged to do.

I’m trying to treat InstaPundit less like work. That may mean less blogging, or not (I notice that here and elsewhere, forecasts of lighter blogging often turn out to be inaccurate), but I started this because it was fun, and I want to keep it that way, not succumb to blog fatigue, as even Lileks himself notes that blogging can start to feel like a “blogligation,” not a hobby. I don’t want that.

So, anyway, there will either be more blogging, or less, or about the same, in the near future. But I’m going to try to make it feel less like work, regardless. And if I didn’t respond to your email, it’s because there are about 4000 emails sitting on the server right now, and I haven’t even tried to keep up over the past several days. That’s part of having it not feel like work, too.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan has thoughts on blog fatigue.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeez, Sullivan’s not suffering from blog fatigue. Just go there and see how much he’s posted since the item above.