Well, for some reason, I've decided to start a new blog. My last blog died through neglect, and I'm not all much reassured this one will do much better. Nevertheless, it's worth a shot.
To that end, I want to be upfront about this blog. While there will no doubt be vignettes of things I'm doing, the reason my last blog died of neglect was because I rarely consider what I'm doing to be news worthy or interesting, meaning it doesn't occur to me to write about any of that. And for those of you who might kindly disagree, do remember last year that I was writing my thesis and there are only so many times one can write "woke up, read, wrote, thought about eating, and went to class, wished I was doing my thesis reading instead, wished I had followed through on eating, doing more reading, wondering why I haven't eaten today, fell asleep" before it got old. So I just avoided the whole process and didn't write about any of that.
What I did write about was what I did find to be thought-provoking, idea--like "do angels have free will? If they do, does life matter?" Unfortunately, judging by the response they generated, these mostly seemed to be things of interest only to me. At which point I decided publishing these thoughts on the web was pretty silly.
In conversations I've had since, I'm starting to think the problem was as much my expectations and hopes as much as anything else. I had hoped these thoughts would provoke others to write long responses on their own ruminations, but the subject matter, coupled with the length and the apparent idiosyncratic interest seems to have precluded such from others. Considering that my model was the French Enlightenment salons that provoked intellectuals to write voluminous correspondence about the matters of issue, I might have been overly ambitious in my aspirations.
So I'll state this straight-up. While I will undoubtedly publish mundane, prosaic material, most likely on some bee in my bonnet (bitching and moaning=boring, if cathartic, so I'll try to keep that minimal), what I want this blog to be is an inspiration for lengthy, enlightened public discourse. To carry on conversations in the comments box is almost rather absurd, so I encourage long emails and thoughtful ruminations, which I would love to publish in turn. The things I'm posting aren't axes I have to grind, but the momentary thoughts the flitters across one's mind at 2AM. So while I reserve the right to post on what's happening in my life, those posts will more or less by definition be in the minority.
I'm looking to write essays, in the original sense of the word: extended, written, and thought-out expressions of one's thoughts on an issue. On some issues people speak with conviction and purpose, and attempt to clearly prove a point. But on others, the proof isn't the point, but the thought process and the activity of writing. So as much as I would love to have this blog serve as a vehicle to uncovering the truth of some activity... that might just possibly be beyond my ken or even interest. I'm just want to promote open, public discourse.
