It is one year ago today that I staked my own little claim here in the blogsphere and joined the conversation. I always wanted a vacation home--this space may be the closest I ever get. Reading blogs is a vacation of sorts into a world of imagination, a sojourn into interesting, fresh, sometimes bizarre sometimes profound ideas. Writing a blog offers a vacation of sorts for the professional writer because there are no editors dictating what, why, or how. Huzzah!
The first blog I started reading was James Wolcott’s--his original from 2004 before he was beamed into the VF mothership in 2006. I don’t remember how I found it, but reading it became, and remains, a daily thing. Wolcott makes me laugh and reduces me to the web incarnation of the girl “penciling the words ´Yes, very true´ into the margin” of his blog. I don’t regress like this for just anyone, ya know.
Through his impeccable judgment I met many of the sphere’s bright lights, including Matt Zoller Seitz and his House crew, Lance Mannion, Tom Watson, Blue Girl, and later all of the newcritics bloggers. The blog landscape is dauntingly immense, and location, location, location still holds. I entered it in the company of these most wonderful neighbors, and that has made all the difference.
As others have said, the “Delete This Blog” button on the backend does sometimes beckon. The empty page can feel bleak and mocking. Blogging is a multilayered relationship—-with the readers who stop by, with bloggers I visit, with my own thoughts in the writing process. In some posts I seem to meet my inner twee self. She’s not everyone’s cup of tea, not even mine, but she will not be stifled, and at least on the Net, no one gets hurt.
When it begins to feel entirely for naught, I’ll peek at the site meter and see that people in Sweden and Australia and Texas all visited from searching on Horace’s "eram sum qualis bonae sub cyrene regno" while I was sleeping. They can’t all be college kids looking to lift stuff for a paper. How amazing is this world where people search for the words to Harry Lauder’s “Wee doch ‘n’ doris,” or for the Rupert Brooke lines “Dawn was theirs, and sunset, and the colours of the earth” or for Thomas Hardy's poem about the Titanic, and then they click over for a visit. What they find is probably not always what they were expecting, but that's part of the beauty of blog reading.
So I’ve signed a lease for another year. Que sera, sera. Thanks very much to everyone who has stopped by and made it all worthwhile. In the spirit of my blogaversary, may I recommend The Avengers 1966 season’s “The House that Jack Built” to you. It is one very cool episode.
8 comments:
Happy blogging anniversary! I'm happy to have you in the neighborhood.
Happy Blogiversary, M.A.!
I liked your line about meeting your inner twee self.
:)
Many thanks gals. Claire, I meant to tell you that I don't get Bravo. Time Warner took it out of the package with HBO, to force you to buy yet another level. So no Project Runway for me :(
So sad, MA! We miss your commentary!
Glad to have you online, M.A. Keep on writing!
Thanks Matt. Thanks for stopping by.
M.A., in honour of your blogiversary I'm about to start watching the (work-related) Mad Men DVDs that have appeared in my house! You've been wetting my appetite for months.
Wyndham, I hope you're going to write about Mad Men. We need to know how it plays for the Londoner.
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