Happy New Year!

Fireworks in Rīga
Image Credit: Mstyslav, via Wikimedia Commons

Welcome to 2019 everyone! We hope you had a fantastic time celebrating the end of the old and the beginning of the new year.

As you have probably noticed, things have been a bit quiet over the past few weeks. Our last weekly news update was almost a month ago, and Otto and I decided to take the most recent off from the podcast as he travelled to Italy and I tried to devote all my attention to my family here in Jelgava. 

It probably isn't hard for you to imagine that running this kind of news blog isn't exactly easy. Putting together just the weekly news updates is incredibly time consuming even with all of the help I get from Kristen, and it doesn't leave much time for the coalition talk updates of the other types of guides to topics that I wish we could put out more frequently. The problem with news and politics is that unlike blogs about other topics, we can't just postpone publishing articles until a bit later — what was written on Sunday might be completely cancelled out by something that happens on Tuesday. 

Part of the nature of this being a 100% independent and free (in every sense of the word) news blog is that all of us have full-time jobs and other parts of our lives that prevent us from being able to dedicate as much time as we wish we could to it. However, it has certainly been worth it! I appreciate all the great feedback that we've gotten so far, and we're looking forward to starting the new year strong and continuing to keep English speakers up to date and informed with what's going on throughout the country.

Although this has been a bit of a quiet time, there is plenty on the horizon for us in 2019. Otto and I will be putting together our 2018 year in review podcast episode in a few days when he returns, and Kristen and I have re-tooled the weekly updates to make them a bit less time-intensive for us and hopefully more useful for you as well. The first new update post will come this weekend. I've also been working on a guide to Latvia's five longest-serving prime ministers that will get published as soon as we have a new one, which will have to happen sooner or later! Kris has some more great columns that he's working on, and Kristen has a new series about journalism in Latvia that she's begun work on as well. The website is also quite overdue for an overhaul, so expect a well-needed facelift in the next month or so.

I guess what I'm trying to say is thanks for sticking with us and making all of this worthwhile! All of us here wish you the best possible start to this decade's final year, and a safe and successful start to the Latvian Republic's second century.

-Joe