What Is The Meaning of This “MAD TAB” Blog?

Here’s the brief story of why I stopped blogging and why I now begin again.

It’s Sunday, May 7, 2017, and today I return to a passion abandoned almost eight years: the personal, fun, hobby blog.

I had kept various blogs and home-pages during junior high, high school, college (1996-2006), and for 3 years after, but in August of 2009 I figured they had served their purpose, and decided to stop. It was then that I stopped blogging for fun and went pro. That summer I accepted a full-time position editing, growing, and developing a media criticism blog for a political non-profit organization. Two years later, in September 2011, I moved to a similar position as associate editor at a for-profit, new media start-up company, editing their lifestyle blog, opinion columnists, and freelance article submissions.

Today I have a foot in both worlds. In May of 2015 I resigned as associate editor and joined a for-profit fiction publisher where I edit and acquire novels and also manage the website. A year later, in May of 2016, I took a second position as coordinator at a research institution/non-profit think tank.

All throughout these changes I poured my energy and focus into the publications I edited — keeping a personal blog like this seemed unnecessary and time-consuming. But now everything’s changed — it’s May 2017, and at both the sites I edit we are now accepting new contributors. (Click here to learn more and contact us with queries or submissions.) It finally feels right again to start a blog that’s casual and fun; where I can experiment with creative ideas and connect with kindred spirits who are interested in the subjects to be featured on this blog.

Why “MAD TAB”? Because I enjoy acronyms. These six letters will encapsulate the main subjects of this blog:

Maura, April, & David’s Travel, Art, & Book Blog

Maura is our Siberian Husky. I will endeavor to feature new photos and short videos of her regularly. Here’s a photo from our trip to Morro Bay last month:

April Bey is my life partner; she is an artist, activist and professor. I am very proud of her feminist pop artwork — which you can see at her Instagram and website — and which I’ll be featuring and commenting on regularly. Here is a photo of the most recent work sold, purchased by a resort in the Bahamas:

I am David Swindle, former ideological political editor/writer/activist-turned counter-cultural editor/writer/activist. In addition to posts about April and Maura, I intend to blog  about:

  1. Books that I’m reading or have read and the ideas in them that most interest me. I want to encourage thoughtful discussion and debate. (And I need to blog about them to organize my thinking on the subjects.)
  2. The upcoming novels that I have edited and will be published this year and next. I’m very excited about the writers I’ve been working with to prepare their books.
  3. Our travels — upcoming trips, previous trips, and potential trips to plan.
  4. Links, excerpts and commentary on blogs and writings by authors I appreciate.
  5. Recommendations and comments on movies, TV shows, music, etc.
  6. As with this post, expect a fair amount of Alice in Wonderland references.

What you won’t find on this blog:

  1. Clickbait pageview pursuits. Burnt out on this.
  2. Ideological, polemical bomb-throwing. Burnt out on this too.
  3. Discussion of the president or the two dominant political parties. I started taking a break from partisan political activism in 2015 and today remain satisfied with that shift. The mantra popularized by Andrew Breitbart — that politics is downstream from culture — has proven itself true and valuable to me in both the micro and macro levels.

Thank you everyone out there for your support and friendship over the years. I’m going to aim for at least one post per day (much shorter than this long opener here.) I hope to remind myself and everyone else about how much more there is to life than the obsessions of the 24-hour news cycle and the oversimplifications of Left/Right, Us Vs Them ideological combat…

Author: David Swindle

Editor, writer, activist.

5 thoughts on “What Is The Meaning of This “MAD TAB” Blog?”

  2. Pingback: In Praise of The Rock (And His Best Film So Far) – MAD TAB Blog

    1. Thank you so much for reading and for your kind words, Leslie! I always appreciate your thoughtful perspective and welcome any responses, criticisms, suggestions, debate, etc. Best wishes, David

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