miscellaneous: December 2008 Archives
One year for this site
It's been a year since I put up this site. My original thought in doing so was that I was involved in so many projects, I needed a clearinghouse for all of them, and a place for thoughts, links, etc. that wasn't specific to any of them. Well, that hasn't changed.
My time these days is split between Emergencity, Tribal Core and a network of Ojai sites, particularly The Ojai Post. I'm spread a little thin, but finding balance in work and life is something that we all have to find. I'd like to reinvigorate my participation on this site, so I'll keep an eye out for stories of interest, and then actually make the effort to translate that here.
Happy Holidays, Christmas, Chanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, Chalica to you and yours...
Andrew Sullivan: Why I Blog
A fantastic extended essay from Atlantic blogger-columnist Andrew Sullivan on the history, construct and psychology of blogging. It's not written from afar but rather from the epicenter, as Andrew has been blogging before it was called that since 2000.
As you read a log, you have the curious sense of moving backward in time as you move forward in pages—the opposite of a book. As you piece together a narrative that was never intended as one, it seems—and is—more truthful. Logs, in this sense, were a form of human self-correction. They amended for hindsight, for the ways in which human beings order and tidy and construct the story of their lives as they look back on them. Logs require a letting-go of narrative because they do not allow for a knowledge of the ending. So they have plot as well as dramatic irony—the reader will know the ending before the writer did.
Anyone who has blogged his thoughts for an extended time will recognize this world. We bloggers have scant opportunity to collect our thoughts, to wait until events have settled and a clear pattern emerges. We blog now—as news reaches us, as facts emerge. This is partly true for all journalism, which is, as its etymology suggests, daily writing, always subject to subsequent revision. And a good columnist will adjust position and judgment and even political loyalty over time, depending on events. But a blog is not so much daily writing as hourly writing. And with that level of timeliness, the provisionality of every word is even more pressing—and the risk of error or the thrill of prescience that much greater.
