After Long Silence

For years I have expressed puzzlement at the phenomenon of the blog. The strange devaluation of the private, the revelation of one's thoughts to potential millions of strangers--these notions ring strangely against even my generation X ears. I'm not, by, nature, a writer of personal journals--not given to ruminating on my life in prose--in part because my life is so defined by writing and I figure I'm saying it all in one form or another already, and in part because if I do have spare time (what is this thing called "spare time"?) I feel I should be using it either diligently working on the book whose incompletion consumes me and haunts my dreams, or playing with my kids. But I realized that some degree of support is missing from my current endeavors: while I'm surrounding by loving family and friends, I don't have that sense I had while I was writing my dissertation that a cohort of pals were in the same boat and could offer the occasional life raft of encouragement. So I figured I'd put it out there in the Blogosphere, and perhaps attract a few readers who could offer advice, cheering anecdotes, or just camaraderie.