Hiatus

You've probably already figured it out, but I think it's time to officially say this blog is on an indefinite break. I always hesitated to say so before because, inevitably, as soon as I vowed to take a break, I'd think of something else to say. This time, I think, I can safely make the call.

I'll still be around. I tweet in the meantime and follow a handful of blogs via my reader. And you're certainly welcome to comment on old entries; I'll still get those and try to respond :).

2009 in review

William the Coroner had a cool post recapping 2009 in blog posts and site traffic trends. While I don't have as sophisticated site traffic info, I can at least recap some of the highlights of the year.

It hasn't been a great blogging year in these here parts. The more that goes on my life, the less I want to write about. Sorry. That said, here's what I consider to be highlights of the year... or lowlights, as the case may be.

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

I usually do poorly with new year's resolutions unless they're concrete in some way or quantifiable. So... I vow to blog more regularly in 2010. Catch ya in the next decade.

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Now playing: Nina Simone - Feeling Good
via FoxyTunes

The things people will do for goofy badges

30 posts, 30 days. I freakin' did it. What did it prove? Not much, really, save that once I get an idea in my head I will carry it through in letter at least if not in spirit. And the spirit was definitely lacking. I thought this exercise would snap me out of the writing slump this last year brought on. Again, only in letter.

I need to get my blogging mojo back, and I'm not sure how to do that.

If you've continued reading in spite of a lack of content, I thank you for your patience. I hope to bring it back up again eventually. If you left because of the aforementioned, well, thanks for having stopped by. Again, I hope to fix that. If you're a new reader, I promise you I am capable of better writing. I hope to prove it again soon.

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Now playing: Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Windows
via FoxyTunes

In other words...

I got nothin' to say right now. One more day after this, and Nablopomo's over. Whew. It won't be too soon.

In the meantime, here's a shiny toy I found online: Wordle.

It generates a cloud of words based on recent content. Here's what it made of mine:

Embracing the random

Dear reader(s), after a little over a year in our writer-reader relationship, I feel comfortable enough to let my bloggerly vulnerability show. I shall leave last night's last-minute post as is as a demonstration that I am willing to let you see me at my less-than-best and as a token of faith that you shall not hold that against me. In fact, in my mental best-case scenario, such a post would then be interpreted as a bold and confident move, leaving you more in awe of my vivaciousness.

On the subject of blogging, I've wooed another over to the dark side. My dear, dear friend from high school has this habit of frequently posting news stories and videos and whatnot on her Facebook profile, accompanied by some commentary that frequently sparks a discussion amongst her friends. I nagged her intermittantly to start a damn blog already, and about six months later (a conservative estimate on my part, actually), she has started one.

I am happy to be the first (or at least one of the first) to welcome Sayida Siyasa of Arabia to the blogosphere.

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Now playing: Hot Water Music - Moonpies for Misfits
via FoxyTunes

Whoops...

Know how women stereotypically are the ones to cling to anniversaries and significant dates? About that...

It occurred to me this evening that my one-year blog-a-versary (however the heck you spell it) should be coming up.

Um. Yeah. Missed it, actually.

Good thing this blog isn't, say, my lesbian lover, or else I totally would have had to buy flowers for that oversight.

A swift kick in the ass

I can never decide which party I hate more: the Republicans for their policies, or the Democrats for acting like they're significantly different. I've said it before and will say again that I despise the major parties and despise the process by which we are so generously given the choice between picking the good cop or the bad cop.

I wonder how long before the Democrats get their panties in a wad over Ralph Nader announcing a run for presidency. Now, I'm not a starry-eyed Naderite. I cannot vouch for any purity of intention in his previous campaigns, and indeed, I'm suspicious by nature of any person who aspires to one of if not the highest office in the Western world. That said, even if I don't vote for the guy, I applaud him for the perspective he brings to the race and for rightfully calling out the parties on their little bait-and-switch game.

. . .

I had more to say than that, but lost it in transmission between brain and keyboard. Or brain, I think that's where the problem is. I know I haven't been updating as faithfully as I used to, and I apologize for the accompanying lack of content and quality. I'm trying to get back into the groove, but I pretty much have to catch an "up" day or milk an otherwise insignificant incident for (dubious) blogability factor, and those are both fleeting as of late. I guess you could say I'm trying to work through a rough spot in my personal life.

National Blog Posting Month, NaBloPoMo has apparently gone year 'round, and there's now an option to pick and choose months. I'll try to post daily in March, see if I can at least lift this writer's damper.

Check this out

I got my 1,000th hit last night/this morning. Nifty.

Interesting factoid? The last search string before hit #1,000 was "overeducated sex." Other recent strings included "downfall of the English language" and "graduation angst." Another string was "how to make any twit fall in love with you book" (hint: I am not just "any" twit, and I do have standards, FYI.)

Or how about "zombie kill chop off head"? (In case the book backfires, maybe?)

One of my favorites is "tyranny of morning people." (Start a night owl's revolution, comrade, and I'm there.)

And sometimes people ask questions I don't think this blog can answer: "WERE DO SNOTS COME FROM?" or "Why don't I care about anything?" or the ever-enduring "What planet do freshmen come from?"

Here's a sneaky way to get more hits, if you're so inclined: toss little bits of song lyrics into posts. Or whole songs. Or poems. Or excerpts from books. But mostly, the song lyrics will bring in Google searches. A few strings: "hold our breath and go down with just one last kiss to rest," "dark colors fill the sky drenched the boat," "three cheers for tyranny, unapologetic apathy," and countless variations on "you're so cold but you feel alive."

There tend to be trends in search strings; around Veteran's Day, I was getting hits pertaining to the Tim O'Brien "How to Tell a True War Story." And then, a couple months back or so, I got these strings in the span of about a week, from Delhi: "overeducated is possible for a job from wikipedia," "Essays of overeducated for a job," "essay on it is possible to be overeducated for a job," and "composition on it is possible to be overeducated for a job."

I couldn't trace all these strings back if it weren't for Feedburner. Sitemeter is all fine and dandy, but it only goes back 100 hits. And the other advantage of Feedburner is that it sometimes registers hits that Sitemeter, for whatever reason, doesn't catch, and it notes how many people subscribe to in a reader and interact with content. So, my hit count lags from time to time, but at any given point in time, anywhere between 6 and 12 people are interacting with content via readers. Cool stuff; I'd have put the estimate at about 5 if left to my own devices. . . I guess there's no accounting for taste ;).

So, thanks for visiting and reading and commenting, folks. It's been a fun ride so far.

*smirk*

I'm planning on being scarce or just plain absent from my blog for the next week or so. You see, I'll be out of town, and I'm pretty sure I'll leave my laptop behind. Where to? A nicer place. Let me show you two forecasts. The first is where I live; the second is where I'm going.

You know what they say about the Midwest, right? Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes and it'll change.

I love storms, and the consistency of temperature is a novelty. And all the temperatures are above freezing. W00t!

I'll try and pop back in briefly tomorrow/later today with my multimedia post, but if I don't, I'll be back next Friday evening.

Bidding farewell to 2007

I feel like I should write something to commemorate the end of the year, something that both acknowledges what transpired and looks forward to what comes next. My previous attempts to write that post over the last few days have ended up deleted. They felt too "emo," and strangely, too personal. For a blog. Yeah, go figure.

I tried coming up with one word to sum up the year and couldn't. 2007 was strange, I said. Draining. Overwhelming. Unsettling. Sobering. Exciting. None fit quite right, and to say it's been an ineffable year is a semantic cop-out. So I'll settle for this: 2007 was a year of massive change, both in terms of my professional and personal lives.

If I could have seen myself last year as I sit here, now, at the end of 2007, I'm... not sure what I'd have thought. Some changes I could have foreseen, like graduating. Others, the internal changes, not so much. Most days, I'm not even sure which is true: that I have changed in massive ways, or that I haven't changed much at all.

2007 seems like the year I turned a hell of a lot of energy inward, too much probably. I feel like I've had the strongest sense of who I am, where I've grown, and an all-too-keen awareness of where my defects still lie.

And in the midst of that existential mess, 2007 gave me a stronger appreciation of my friends. They've come through for me for so many ways, through their support and encouragement, even though I spent so much time caught up in a mess of negativity and had little to offer in return.

So, to rescue this post from the negativity that pervaded the previous attempts, I'm going to state, in vague terms, my new year's resolution: if I can't learn to embrace change, I need to come to grips with it and stop running the other way. I've already started moving in that direction, but keeping up the impetus is the challenge. This time 'round, it's one I think I'm up to.

And lastly, I think Scrivener put it best: "Happy New Year! And 2007? Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out." Cheers!

Curiouser and curiouser

Sitemeter touts itself as a way of seeing how "customers" get to sites and what interests them. Bull. I'll bet the majority--of free users, at least--just use Sitemeter or similar services out of morbid curiosity and vanity. How many people visit this thing? How long do they stay? What blog posts are popular?

And the burning question: How the hell are they finding my blog? The answers can be quite revealing.

Take this one, which just left me scratching my head:

But that's nothing in comparison to this one:

I try to understand the trends. For a spell, I had a bunch of hits from Delhi about being overeducated for a job. Several visitors recently came in search of the Tim O'Brien "How to Tell a True War Story" excerpt I posted for Veteran's Day. It's a trend. It fits.

But "catharsis in my arse" baffles me. Firstly, if one were in search of catharsis, said orifice would probably not be the best place to start looking. And if someone were googling said search string with the conviction that said person had said catharsis lodged in aforementioned orifice, well, frankly, I'd recommend googling proctologists instead.

Beginning of the end

I don't know how it is in other industries, but December's a crazy busy time in academia, for students and faculty alike.

In spite of that, I love it. Sure, I'm usually stressed, sleep-deprived, and cranky, but there's an underlying eagerness to have it all done with. No matter how much I like a given set of classes, I thrive on novelty and the prospect of an upcoming new set of classes. I loved the prospect of new books, new material, new professors, and even a fresh batch of classmates as a student; now I look forward to the beautiful honeymoon period of a new semester, where students do their reading and assignments, but I also like having fresh slates to work with (even if the first set of writing I get always startles me with its... uh... roughness around the edges).

But I also like December for the same reason I love autumn--the end of a year and the prospect of a new one. I go through the motions of new year's resolutions, and like most, rarely accomplish them. I think they're just too ambitious. One of last year's ambitions was to find a balance between work and personal life; clearly, I haven't accomplished it. I thought I'd come to terms with God, but that relationship's still on the rocks. I thought I'd stop looking back at the what-ifs, and clearly, I haven't.

Such is life.

But I'm formulating next year's ambition. And it's simple. Oh, there are accompanying, unspoken goals that I would like to accomplish, and those are certainly bolder and more ambitious. But I think if I carry through with the relatively minor act I've been pondering for over three years, something that most people would probably do with little thought, the other things might just fall into place. It's a small act, but, I hope, a symbolic one. If--no, when I carry through, I'll blog about it ;).

---

I've heard it said that once you do something regularly for about two weeks, it becomes habit. After a month of blogging every day, I actually started twitching to write this morning. I may become a more regular blogger after all.

With apologies to T.S. Eliot

This is the way Nablopomo ends
This is the way Nablopomo ends
This is the way Nablopomo ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Heh. I had to do that, just had to. T.S. Eliot is probably rolling in his grave right now (original source here). And for the record, I have been measuring my life out not in coffee spoons, but in coffee cups. OK, I'll leave Eliot alone now. I was just having a bit of fun with him, no malicious intent. I really can't criticize too severely the man who wrote the basis for one of my favorite musicals, Cats.

So. This is the end of an intense month. I went back through my old blogs to see what I'd written on Nov. 30 for the past 6 years, but there are generally fewer than a handful of posts each November (peak posting months, not surprisingly, are June, July, and August). It stretched me, mentally, this posting every day deal, but I stubbornly vowed I'd do it and I did. Quality, what I did have, at any rate, took a bit of a hit, but it also pushed me to hit publish on a few things I might've otherwise talked myself out of. I didn't post every idea that came to mind, either. I spared my readers a rant on the other day's outrages in the Wal-Mart parking lot (venting about the big box chain is like shooting fish in a barrel--far too easy and makes the shooter appear unambitious and a little hackneyed). I didn't post about the random conversations I've had with students (for one thing, about my tendency to wear my winter coat, wrist warmers, and flip-flops). I didn't post about my response to my peers' tendency to be marrying and engaging at an alarming rate recently (for one thing, my views on marriage are... uh... cynical and could appear bitter). I didn't post much about my job dissatisfactions. I kept the nagging metaphysical stuff to a minimum, even though those questions have flared back up again. For the most part, I think I kept from making an ass of myself.

I did intend to post about the albums that rock my world, which I plan to do when I have more time, as I want to give them the proper homage. I also have some interesting news articles bookmarked to write about, again, when I've the time to give them thoughtful treatment.

A student once told me, in defense of procrastination, pressure makes diamonds. Maybe, I replied, but it doesn't polish them. I don't know if National Blog Posting Month created any diamonds, but it at least created small nuggets of thoughts, some of which I like. And that's worth something.

Existentialism and environmentalism

In my hop-skip-jump-style of web surfing, I came across several links to Blog Action Day. On October 15, participating bloggers are to post "about the environment in their own way and relating to their own topic." Consider me participating.

The site says bloggers can post something off-topic for their blog, or find a way to work it in to a blog's general theme. What works even better is to keep in the tone of the usual style. I, uh, have a style? Well, I am fond of sharing nifty quotes I've found in my reading. First, I thought I'd find some poetry to share. Wendell Berry, I thought, and googled him, read a few poems, enjoyed them, then thought I probably wouldn't be the first to post his poetry for an environment-themed day. Back to the drawing board, then. It shouldn't be this hard for someone versed in British Romanticism...

Something related to Daniel Quinn's Ishmael? I could re-post that "review" I wrote on my old blog. Nope. Cheating.

So I settled on Derrick Jensen. The following excerpt is from his teaching memoir Walking on Water. Inspiring reading, if you're into environmentalism and teaching and helping to foster creativity. Even if you disagree with his politics, it's at least worth a read to see how his political beliefs translate into what's ordinarily a hierarchical structure in the classroom.

There's really only one question in life, and only one lesson. This question is whispered endlessly to us from all directions. The moon asks it each night, as do the stars. It's asked by drops of rain that cling to the soft ends of cedar branches, and by teardrops that cluster at the fold of your nose or the edge of your mouth. Frogs, flowers, stones, pieces of broken plastic, all ask this of each other, of themselves, and of you. The question: Who are you? The lesson: We're born or sprouted or hatched or congealed or we fall from the sky, we live, and then we die or are worn away or broken or disperse into a river, lake, or sea, ripples flowing outward to bounce back from the far shore. And in the meantime, in that middle, what are you going to do? How are you going to find, and be, who you are? Who are you, and what are you going to do about it?

If modern industrial education--and more broadly industrial civilization--required "the subsummation of the individual," that is, the conversion of vibrant human beings into "automata," that is, into a pliant workforce, then the most revolutionary thing we can do is follow our hearts, to manifest who we really are. And we are in desperate need of revolution, on all scales and in all ways, from the most personal to the most global, from the most serene to the most wrenching. We're killing the planet, we're killing each other, and we're killing ourselves.

And still our neighbors--hummingbirds, craneflies, huckleberries, the sharp cracking report of the earthquake that shakes you awake in your bed--ask us, who are you, who are you in relation to each of us, and to yourself?

Our current system divorces us from our hearts and bodies and neighbors, from humanity and animality and embeddedness in the world we inhabit, from decency, and even the most rudimentary intelligence. (How smart is it to destroy your own habitat? Who was the genius who came up with the idea of poisoning our own food, water, and air?) I've heard defenders of this system say that following one's heart is not a good enough moral compass, that Hitler was following his heart when he tried to conquer the world, tried to rid the world of those deemed unworthy. But Hitler was no more following his heart than any of the rest of us who blindly contribute to a culture that is accomplishing what Hitler desired but could not himself bring to completion. The truth is--as I have shown, exhaustively and exhaustingly--that it is only through the most outrageous violations of our hearts and bodies that we are inculcated into a system where it can be made to make sense to some twisted and torn part of our psyches to perpetuate a way of being based on the exploitation, immiseration, and elimination of everyone and everything we can get our hands on.

Within this context, the question the whole world asks at every moment cannot help but also be the most dangerous: Who are you? Who are you, really? Beneath the trappings and traumas that clutter and characterize our lives, who are you, and what do you want to do with the so-short life you've been given? We could not live the way we do unless we avoided that question, trained ourselves and others to avoid that question, forced others to avoid placing that question in front of us, and in fact attempted to destroy those who do.

If Jensen interests you, there are some video interviews with him on Youtube, a series of about six clips, beginning with this one.

Five blogs I read

I found an article on Yahoo about BlogDay. I'm a bit late with this, but better late than never, eh? So, here are five blogs I read and why.

• Scrivenings - When I was considering grad school, I stumbled upon his blog. I've been lurking faithfully since (actually, I may have popped up once or twice under any infinite number of possible pseudonyms...). There's a bit of everything--teaching, life issues, kid stories, art, and pictures. And he had green hair at the time, if memory serves, which struck me as pretty cool.
• Writing as Jo(e) - I believe I found this one through Scrivenings. Beautiful storytelling and accompanying pictures. I've probably been lurking just as long at her blog, too. Not very good manners on my part. Whenever I try and convince people that the world of blogging is more than just 13-year-olds with Xangas or people with too much time on their hands and the convenience of a ready Internet connection, Jo(e)'s is the first one I link them to.
• Cranky Epistles - Get yer fix of snark here. I honestly don't remember when I first stumbled on her blog, but there's a good chance my computer monitor does.
  
• Joshua's Walkabout - I knew Josh through the campus peace group I was part of during my senior year. For anyone (like myself) who's ever thought about the Peace Corps, it's an interesting chance for the vicarious experience. Lot of food for thought on this one.
• Postsecret - This one may technically be cheating, but I don't care. It's not one person's blog, but it's more of a collective baring of the soul. The idea is that people send in their secrets anonymously, and the result is an interesting mixture. They run the range from heartbreaking secrets about abuse or being in the closet to declarations of having found happiness to the sometimes bizarre. It's fascinating to see how much in common we have with our fellow humans, whether for good or ill.

First post is the...deepest?

There's something daunting about a first blog post. I've blogged before, under several different pseudonyms, but the first post is always a challenge. Blank text field intimidation, or something like that. As a writer, I want to set the perfect tone, come out the gate at my wittiest or most insightful. Anything less is a personal letdown.

Or maybe that's just me and my neuroses. At any rate, here I am. I'll hit publish and call this done.

After all, the wit and insight can come later. They will have lost the edge and the clarity and the perfection they had in my mind, but by then, it's no longer the first post, so it's OK.