One Year Later, or Why I Blog

February 19, 2007

Exactly one year ago I began this blog. I just looked back on my first post and I continue to believe in the goal expressed there: to construct a blog that would not be ephemeral, but contain something of lasting value.

One thing I see clearly as time passes is the way the very structure of blogging pushes writers toward ephemeral expression. Popular blogs are almost inevitably a reflection of daily events, whether in politics or popular culture. The goal is to talk about what is happening now.. and to produce talking points that get transferred to other blogs. It is the people who talk about the most talked about things that get links.. and those links in turn establish how highly a blog is rated on a site like Technorati. The push to insert your voice into the conversation will almost always mean picking up ephemeral topics.

What attracted me to blogging was the way it liberated me from talking about somebody else's agenda. I could review old books or new books. I could stretch and develop my own point of view on the world. I could write with a more personal tone than was possible in a journalistic or academic forum. Along with this came a desire to avoid writing ephemeral blogs that would make sense to no one in five years (I mean by commenting on the political minutiae).. yes, to document the passing world around me, but also to shape this site into something permanent.. something of interest for the long haul.

Blogging happens to fit nicely into my own writing habits. For long stretches of my life I kept journals (I have a closet full of these right now). At other points in my life (notably during my time overseas in Egypt) I wrote a series of long group e-mails to friends and family. There is something inside me that wants to write.. that demands that I process my experiences through writing them down. Blogging has moved that impulse into a more public sphere.. but I don't feel like it has fundamentally changed my approach to writing.

During those years of journaling, I never devoted a great deal of thought to who would actually read what I wrote. That was not the point.. and it still isn't (although I have been delighted to hear from a number of people who read this blog!). I am content to be a spectator in the wider scheme of things.. the best position since actors in this world are generally puppets of wider forces. I will be a writing spectator.. a documenter.

I began this blog as I was winding down my grad student days.. and this one year anniversary finds me teaching in the Religious Studies department at Lawrence University. This has forced me to think about how my blogging works into my philosophy of teaching. I can think of two important ways that it connects to that philosophy.

First, it provides a way to model the intellectual life that we are striving to communicate at a liberal arts college. The goal of this education is not to deliver a great bundle of explained knowledge but to develop the mental tools for approaching the complexities of our world.. and a taste for exploring those complexities. This blog does not try to stake out "expert" territory.. but simply to model a rational and creative approach to life, places, and texts.

Second, this blog promotes a writing lifestyle. One of my fundamental beliefs concerning education is that writing is not something that can be taught with a few classes.. it comes about by writing and more writing. I hope to encourage students to take a shot at developing a similar writing lifestyle. I can't tell you how many times I have sat down to write a blog and not known exactly what I thought about a given topic.. say a movie I just watched. Only as I start to write down words can I begin to see what I'm after.. what my angle is. Writing brings clarity to thought.. and that rational clarity should be a part of a liberal arts education.

I like to imagine this blog in 10 years.. or in 30 years. This project will not be complete until this blog encompasses a sweep of time like that. I guess that is why I have a soft spot for odd imaginative projects.. It takes a lot of energy to create.. and I like to see that people can persevere and bring a private inner vision to some kind of completion.