Greetings, and welcome to my second attempt to flood the Internets with misguided ponderings, nostalgic waxings, and marginally-interesting observations.
You might have noticed that I stopped contributing to this weblog back in September of ought-six. Why, you are in your right mind to ask, am I starting it up again? Why have I peeled back the protective layer of pseudonymity that allowed me to write about contentious subjects without fear of real-life reprisals? Where’s all the cool, flashy, Web 2.0 stuff that was in the sidebar? Well, if you’re really interested in answers to those questions, I’ll tell you….
The thin veil of secrecy I imposed over my earlier work was so shot full of holes that it began to resemble a piece of lacy women’s undergarments (ummmm, lacy women’s undergarments….). It was also an inordinate drain on my resources — both temporal and emotional. I had presumed that operating under a Secret Identity would permit me to write without self-censorship, but my competing (and paradoxical) desire for recognition by friends and family transformed my disguise into a burdensome lodestone rather than a liberating expressive vehicle. I attained a fairly respectable readership of both persons known and unknown to me, but the constant tension that arose from writing essentially two languages with two hands became overwhelming. President Garfield I am not.
Couple the dual-persona problem with my self-imposed and utterly lunatic goal to write one missive per day and I’m surprised I lasted nine months.
Finally, as an inveterate tinkerer, I wasted too much time adding bells-and-whistles to the site itself, which distracted from the content and caused my to stay up too late at night (the latter problem often inspiring my Good Lady Partner to grow fearsomely irritated with me).
Nevertheless, I remain a broadcaster in search of a microphone, a beacon in search of rocky shore, a performer in search of a proscenium. Now that my first foray into college teaching is drawing to an end (more on that later) and I shall once again enjoy thirty, or even forty minutes of free time each day, I once again pick up pen and paper … er, point my index fingers at a computer keyboard. I promise you a less-frequently-updated, possibly less-grumpy, and less-visually-overwhelming web log with postings proudly signed by my Real Name.
I also went back and forth about whether to include my “back catalog” of posts attributed to my alter ego. I finally decided that there’s a fair amount of decent material in there and that eliminating the stuff I’m not so proud of would be too much work, so the archives are full.
Thank you for reading; come back again.
