TIME TO GO BACK HOME, to my home blog, Althouse. It’s been fun coming over here and cavorting on the big stage that Glenn Reynolds built out of sheer good sense and great writing. It’s been great blogging alongside Michael Totten and Megan McCardle. And it’s been a real pleasure to reach so many new readers here. I hope some of you will follow me over to my usual place. I started my blog back in January of this year, when this campaign season was already well under way. My departure from Instapundit and return back home begins a new phase of blogging without the election to kick around anymore, and I’m interested to see what new subjects I’ll discover with this old topic gone.

When I started my blog I didn’t have a particular topic in mind. I just wanted to express myself. I wanted to live freely in writing. My earliest posts are about high and low culture and life in Madison, Wisconsin. My first post about the presidential campaign was a very silly little thing about Wesley Clark’s body fat, not really even political at all. But as the weeks wore on, I got drawn into the fray, and I found my ways to talk about politics, a subject I’ve normally been content to leave to others. Using my blog to talk about politics, I was able also to see how not talking about politics had been, for me, a way to get along in the hothouse environment that is Madison, Wisconsin. Even though I didn’t mean to use my blog to talk about politics, I end this political season exposed on line as a person with political positions that do not fit in my real world environment. I was happy with the way the election turned out, but I was also confronted by people all around me who were very sad and really angry about the outcome. These people had endured the first term of George Bush’s presidency, beginning with outrage at the way he came into office and suffering a growing, festering anger as new events unfolded. That horrible – illegal! – war in Iraq! Yet there was always Election Day — an end in sight for all of that pain. And now, upon reaching that longed-for end they find it was a mirage. There will be four more years! How unendurable!

I’ve tried to use my last day on Instapundit to reach out to those people, those people who, after all, make up my real world environment. Can’t we put aside the anger and see what we share? An elevator conversation:

Did you hear Kerry’s concession speech?

I’m so glad he conceded today and did not drag it out. It was good of him.

You think so?

I think it will help people deal with things in a constructive, positive way. People have been so angry, and I think it will help heal the wounds …

Except that it won’t heal the wounds! George Bush got reelected by a bunch of gay-hating bigots, religious fanatics … a bunch of gun owners…

My interlocutor got out of the elevator and the doors slid closed in the middle of the list of lowdown, worthless folk from the hinterlands who have unleashed this new atrocity, this second term.

So life goes on in Madison. And I’ll go on blogging from Madison, my special, passionate little town, on my little blog, Althouse. Please come over and keep me company.