Sunday, July 11, 2010

Starting Up the Hill Again

This must be getting old. I’m sorry. But this is the last time—I promise. Years ago, when Jess started a new blog with each new phase in her life, I thought it was a great idea, a great way for a person to mark the end of a phase. The thing is, I’m all phases. I spend a lot of time in self-loathing, so I’m prone to wanting to shed. I guess I’ll just have to embrace the absurdity, accept it as part of who I am, and stay in one (blog)place for a while. So this is it. The title of the blog is a slanted reference to an essay by Albert Camus, and also a bloated “novel” by Ayn Rand. Maybe I’ll have more to say about that later.

The previous blog didn’t see much action. One hundred and twenty-eight posts in three years. That’s a slow week's production for Matthew Yglesias. Actually, the first year in Oklahoma I blogged quite a bit, partly because Oklahoma hadn’t killed my soul yet and partly because I had the election and its aftermath to rant about. But I posted exactly three times in 2010. I didn’t have anything to say that I felt like spending any energy on. I have more energy to say things now, and—even more to the point—I have the need to write. I’ll definitely have more to say about that.

2 comments:

  1. Welcome back! I missed the snarky attitude and insights your last few blogs provided me.

    I wouldn't mind seeing some original fiction on here. My suggestion is to skip a lot of the social commentary (there's enough of that already) and really focus on your passions. Use this venue as a testbed audience. Or, wrap the social commentary in the guise of a story as Vonnegut and Sedaris would.

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  2. I'll never get completely away from the social commentary, because I'm too interested in it, and if anything I'm more politically-minded than when I left MN. Nothing like three years in enemy territory to sharpen your perspective. But there will be less of that--mostly because, as you say, there's plenty of that out there. If I'm talking about global issues now, I hope to add something to the conversation, or at least enhance my understanding of it, rather than just latch onto a story and rant away.

    We'll see about the fiction. I'm not sure my head's there right now.

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