Inaugural Post

I haven’t quite decided why I want to write a blog. Part of it is certainly that Nick fancies designing one, and keeps saying “You know, people would be really interested in reading what you write.”

It’s hard to resist those kind of blandishments.

Partly, it’s because I like to have an outlet, especially now my Ph.D. is coming to an end. Perhaps it might be argued, with careful use of passive voice, that my outlet should be journal articles. But there’s something enticing in a different way about a blog.

I’m ambivalent about blogs as a reader. I read them and enjoy reading them, but part of me feels as though maybe they have a privileged readership, and I’m not it. The same impulse, I suspect, drives my feeling that I may be stalking people who have voluntarily chosen to become my friends on Facebook. Every time I see someone’s birthday is coming up, I get a little guilty sensation. The fact that they have voluntarily friended me is no barrier to the guilt of a second-generation lapsed Catholic.

But I like the idea of writing one. Whether the ambivalence will grow, I can’t say.

What I can say is that I have an idea as to what I want to do with this blog, and it’s vaguely this: reading is both my career and my hobby, and that’s what this blog addresses. If I have somewhere to talk about my reading, I’m less likely to bore Nick senseless by describing in detail why I didn’t like what I just read.

That’s not to say I won’t devote the odd entry to describing how the computer players cheat in Mario Party.