I often wonder why I still maintain a blog. Blogging is a practice that is very much of the oughts, like burning CDs or talking on cell phones. If you want to get into political conversations with the big wigs Twitter makes it much easier. You do not have to write long essays and can merely throw the main ideas out there for others to see. Tweetstorms are much likely to be read than blog essays are. There's a Twitter meme now where people use a photo and label one element "video" and the other "the radio star." It's all kind of silly, but to get meta, Twitter was the video to the radio star of blogs.
Now we all know there are still radio stars, as much as there are blogs. It's just that blogs are a fairly minor corner of the public sphere these days. I find that to be shame, since while Twitter is awfully convenient and I have gained a lot from it, it is not an ideal place to carry on discourse. Ideas get distilled down to their most basic elements, with nuance eliminated. It's a format that ensures lots of fights and disagreement, driving the clicks that Twitter so craves.
It is a format that discourages deep thought and reflection. People who are successful on it tend to trade in snark and bon mots and knowing the most recent memes, but rarely have anything much to say of substance. I felt differently back in the oughties where I had a whole list of blogs I would read on a daily basis that would energize me and give me ideas. The personas of those bloggers also seemed much more measured and so much less fake and performative.
I have recently drastically cut down my Facebook usage, which has had the side effect of upping my Twitter usage. That hasn't been such a good thing, since I get sucked into the most ridiculous petty arguments on a regular basis. As with Facebook, I find myself continually outraged and angry, which is exactly how these platforms want to make us feel. I have been thinking back to what my mental state was like before I engaged in social media, and remembered being a much more reflective person. Ideas would come into my mind, but I would give them serious thought before writing about them. Nowadays like a junky I crave the instant gratification that social media affords me. I see an article about something Trump did that made me angry? I immediately post that sucker with an indignant statement attached to it.
That IS more satisfying that blogging, but far less meaningful. After having let this blog take a back seat I have resolved to focus my writing here, rather than on Facebook or Twitter. Fewer people will read what I have to say here, but what I do have to say will be a helluva lot more profound.
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogging. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2018
Friday, November 4, 2016
A Dozen Years In The Woodshed, Or Why Blog?
Yesterday I was elated and shocked to find out that my piece for Jacobin, "21st Century Victorians," was an editor's pick on the New York Times' mobile site. I know this makes me old fashioned, but I've long thought of the Times as my own Carnegie Hall or Madison Square Garden. If I could get published there, I'd know I'd made it. While they did not publish me, just being recognized by them gave me a huge thrill. Perhaps its getting a bout at the Garden, but on the under card, or Carnegie Hall as an opening act. I'll take it, anyway.
This all got me thinking about this blog and what it's meant to me. And yes, I am going to navel gaze for a bit, please forgive me. I started blogging way back in 2004, when my blog had the unruly title "Fugitive Streets/Jackal Tombs," which was a reference to a line from Proust and a line from Melville. Yes, I was a pretentious grad student at the time.
Blogging was the hot new thing, and it was a needed outlet. For the preceding couple of years I would often write up political rants and sent them to my friends over email. The blog let me do that, and to pretend that I was some kind of pundit or essayist. Truth by told, that had always been something I'd aspired to be.
My intellectual awakening came about in a strange way. I was in junior high, and after school I would often go to the public library and wait for my dad to get off work. (The factory where he worked in the office was just a couple of blocks away.) While the library I would raid the magazine racks. Remember, this is a time before the internet and when cable was mostly reruns and second rate trash. I spent a lot of time reading sports and music magazines, but after awhile I was picking up Time, Newsweek, The New Republic, and yes, National Review. (My politics would not be more formed until I was in high school.) I gravitated to the columns and the reviews more than the news stories. I studied the writing, and thought having a column or writing reviews would be a great job. When I was in high school in my creative writing class I tried to write some social commentary essays, but mostly stuck with poetry and short stories.
I also didn't do journalism in high school, mostly due to the tribalism of that world. I was a debater, and that was my nerd calling, not journalism (or so I thought.) There was also a very subtle but very real social class exclusivity marking the borders of the journalism club at my school.
But my desire to write commentary remained, if buried deep inside me. Debate got some of it out of me in high school and college, but I did have a friend with a very primitive website who posted some of my album reviews. I knew I was never going to be a music critic, but it was fun to play one. In grad school I would write critical essays down in notebooks, and later write up those ranty emails. Blogging was such a sweet release of all the thoughts I had and all the commentaries I wanted to write. If somebody out there in the internet void liked them, so much the better. The blogging helped me process the re-election of George W Bush, but also personal matters, like my failure of an academic career.
As those dozen years rolled on, blogging became less and less hip. Twitter took the wind out of its sails, and people started using their blogs less as spaces for writing, and more for self-promotion. Friends more adventurous than me parlayed their blogs into writing for more respectable and well-known sites. I, being the stubborn German-American Midwesterner that I am, persisted in using the same unprofessional blogspot blog and writing under a silly, culturally referential pseudonym. This blog was my comfort zone. I could just say what I wanted to say and people liked it I was happy, and if not, no big deal. I got to play at being one of those columnists and reviewers that I idolized back in junior high. Wasn't that good enough?
Well, I am glad that I took the initiative to put something out outside of my blog, and I can thank my friend Chauncey DeVega's encouragement for that. I might try to focus more of my writing on that realm, rather than in my humble little corner of the internet here. But most of what I write will still be right here. Blogging might be going the way of the 56K router, but it's been good to me. My twelve years in the woodshed have made me a better writer and thinker, and introduced me to some great folks that I never would have met otherwise. Some people garden, some people fish, some people play music, but I cast out rough essays into the internet void two or three times a week. As hobbies go, it ain't bad.
This all got me thinking about this blog and what it's meant to me. And yes, I am going to navel gaze for a bit, please forgive me. I started blogging way back in 2004, when my blog had the unruly title "Fugitive Streets/Jackal Tombs," which was a reference to a line from Proust and a line from Melville. Yes, I was a pretentious grad student at the time.
Blogging was the hot new thing, and it was a needed outlet. For the preceding couple of years I would often write up political rants and sent them to my friends over email. The blog let me do that, and to pretend that I was some kind of pundit or essayist. Truth by told, that had always been something I'd aspired to be.
My intellectual awakening came about in a strange way. I was in junior high, and after school I would often go to the public library and wait for my dad to get off work. (The factory where he worked in the office was just a couple of blocks away.) While the library I would raid the magazine racks. Remember, this is a time before the internet and when cable was mostly reruns and second rate trash. I spent a lot of time reading sports and music magazines, but after awhile I was picking up Time, Newsweek, The New Republic, and yes, National Review. (My politics would not be more formed until I was in high school.) I gravitated to the columns and the reviews more than the news stories. I studied the writing, and thought having a column or writing reviews would be a great job. When I was in high school in my creative writing class I tried to write some social commentary essays, but mostly stuck with poetry and short stories.
I also didn't do journalism in high school, mostly due to the tribalism of that world. I was a debater, and that was my nerd calling, not journalism (or so I thought.) There was also a very subtle but very real social class exclusivity marking the borders of the journalism club at my school.
But my desire to write commentary remained, if buried deep inside me. Debate got some of it out of me in high school and college, but I did have a friend with a very primitive website who posted some of my album reviews. I knew I was never going to be a music critic, but it was fun to play one. In grad school I would write critical essays down in notebooks, and later write up those ranty emails. Blogging was such a sweet release of all the thoughts I had and all the commentaries I wanted to write. If somebody out there in the internet void liked them, so much the better. The blogging helped me process the re-election of George W Bush, but also personal matters, like my failure of an academic career.
As those dozen years rolled on, blogging became less and less hip. Twitter took the wind out of its sails, and people started using their blogs less as spaces for writing, and more for self-promotion. Friends more adventurous than me parlayed their blogs into writing for more respectable and well-known sites. I, being the stubborn German-American Midwesterner that I am, persisted in using the same unprofessional blogspot blog and writing under a silly, culturally referential pseudonym. This blog was my comfort zone. I could just say what I wanted to say and people liked it I was happy, and if not, no big deal. I got to play at being one of those columnists and reviewers that I idolized back in junior high. Wasn't that good enough?
Well, I am glad that I took the initiative to put something out outside of my blog, and I can thank my friend Chauncey DeVega's encouragement for that. I might try to focus more of my writing on that realm, rather than in my humble little corner of the internet here. But most of what I write will still be right here. Blogging might be going the way of the 56K router, but it's been good to me. My twelve years in the woodshed have made me a better writer and thinker, and introduced me to some great folks that I never would have met otherwise. Some people garden, some people fish, some people play music, but I cast out rough essays into the internet void two or three times a week. As hobbies go, it ain't bad.
Saturday, June 18, 2016
On My Thousandth Post
This right here is post number one thousand of "Notes From The Ironbound." At moments like this, I do have to stop and think about just what the hell I am doing with my life.
I get between 5,000 and 8,000 views a month here, which actually isn't all that much. In the age of Twitter, blogging has become incredibly passe, especially a blog as unprofessional looking as this one with a weird title. Some days I wonder if I am just a pathetic relic of the oughts, a sort of internet Disco Stu. I'd like to get my stuff published in more notable places, but so far that's been going nowhere. I have resolved this summer to try to submit more pitches. Considering the barrage of godawful hot takes on the internet, I can't imagine how they can turn me down.
Hitting this milestone has me thinking about how I first started. This was not my first blog. I started right after the 2004 election, mostly to process what had just happened. I also used to send my friends extended rants over email, and decided that a blog would be a better platform for them. My first blog had the awfully unwieldy name "Fugitive Streets/Jackal Tombs," which I changed to the catchier "I Used To Be Disgusted Now I Try To Be Amused." That blog had a measure of success, but I had to kill it 2011. A former coworker who had stabbed me in the back had previously been trusted with the knowledge that I was writing an anonymous blog that contained some pretty inflammatory opinions about academia and my own workplace. After my nightmare experience at my old job I needed to speak my mind without my former colleagues coming at me. One nasty comment on this blog makes me think that one of them found me, but I've deleted that post and brushed it off.
These facts make my continued blogging even more puzzling. Why keep going with something that hardly anyone reads and could be used against me? I think it comes down to the fact that I love to write about music, current events, culture, and history, and that I am not good enough, interesting enough, or connected enough to get published by others on a consistent basis. (I am very lucky to count the much more successful Chauncey DeVega as a friend, and he has given me many helpful signal boosts.) This blog is my turf. I can write and publish whatever the hell I want, and even if few people read it, I still get to derive a great deal of pleasure from the experience.
I really appreciate the fact that based on the comments and Twitter, I have some loyal readers. Thanks guys, it's good not to feel like I am just shouting into the void. I hope you stick around.
And while I am going to keep my current writing pace for this blog, this summer I think I really need to push myself out of the very cozy comfort zone I've established here, as Chauncey and others have urged me to do. If anyone can give me advice in the comments on how to do that, please let me know.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Why am I Doing This? (and other questions)
I have been blogging now for almost nine years, and it's been so long I am beginning to wonder why I do it. Most blogs are abandoned soon after they are started, but I have been blogging for a decade. This isn't bragging, I legitimately wonder what the hell I've been doing all of this time, since this blog was not launched to get me a book deal or be read by a mass audience. I know what follows is rather solipsistic, but I wonder whether any other bloggers out there have some insight for me.
I started doing it right after the election of 2004, in order to put into words that shock and frustration I felt about George W. Bush getting elected. My friends were also probably tired of getting my long-winded emails sermonizing on this same topic. A friend of mine had started a blog (now defunct) and it seemed like the natural thing to do.
I was not writing to get anybody's attention, but to get out my thoughts and amuse my friends. I also just enjoy writing, and it was nice to do so without any pressure of publication and vetting, which is something that took all the joy out of my academic writing. Back then I was pretty naive, I used my actual name (meaning that potential employers would find the blog) and I gave it the unwieldy name of "Fugitive Streets/Jackal Tombs." The title referenced lines from Proust and Melville. Oh yes, I was still a pretentious grad student back then.
At least my naivety paid off a little. When I met my future wife for the first time, she googled me and found my blog. According to her, what I had written, especially a Beatnik-y piece about hanging out in bars in Lincoln, Nebraska, made me seem interesting and intriguing. That added intrigue that helped me find a woman far out of my league and if for no other reason, has made this blog worth it.
After about three years I decided to scrub my real name and adopt the persona of Werner Herzog's Bear, in homage to one of my favorite film-makers and as kind of a juvenile joke that you'll get if you've seen Grizzly Man. The blog was changed to I Used to Be Disgusted, Now I Try to Be Amused, in reference to one of my favorite Elvis Costello songs. It also fit my attitude at the time, as I was working as a low-paid, overburdened "visiting" professor. By that point I think my writing got a lot better and I started hitting my stride. As always, I just wrote about things that interested me most, mainly music, movies, history, politics, and baseball.
As time went on, especially after I moved to Texas to take a tenure track job that turned into a nightmare, I started writing a lot more about my frustrations with the academic profession. This stuff seemed to get the most readers, perhaps because it came out of a place of unalloyed pain and rage inside of me. After hesitating, I started writing about my specific job situation, which generated some of my best stuff (since it was so genuine), but put me in hot water. A colleague at my job who I made the mistake of befriending ended up joining the mobbing gang tormenting myself and others. I had revealed my blog to him in better times, and after our falling out, he sent a message to me expressing alarm about what I had been writing. Scared of having my cover blown, and traumatized by my experience of bullying, I did one of the hardest things I've ever done: I killed my blog.
I was giving up academia at the time, and so it did feel fitting to start anew, to reaffirm a new chapter in my life. I conceived Notes From the Ironbound being a little different, less full of rants and bitterness and more titled towards longer essays and deep thoughts. A lot of it ended up being me working through the shame and bitterness of having abandoned academia after having fought so hard for my toehold in it.
My blog never turned into a "post-academic" blog, though. I still write about the things that move me, which are pretty much the same things they've always been. It's just me under a different name, not me "branding" myself or playing to a certain niche or popular tastes. I've come to cherish this blog as a creative outlet, and also as a space of comfort. I can write what I like, and don't have to worry about what an editor or peer reviewer thinks of it. Some of my friends have commented to me about how often I am posting these days, and that's because I am writing every day. It makes me happy, and is a better way to while away the evening hours between putting my daughters to sleep and my own bedtime than watching the television. Those hours of the night used to be spent reading or watching arty films, but I just can't hack it anymore. I am so exhausted at the end of the day that I can't pick up a book or play something with subtitles without passing out; I do my reading on the train during my commute and have fallen out of touch with cinema.
Occasionally I have tried to tout the blog a little; I've posted stuff on the DailyKos' diaries section and joined Twitter, which has led to some of my posts getting attention. Despite these efforts, not a lot of folks read this blog. Perhaps I do need to tout my blog more, find a more engaging focus, etc., but I am a plugger, and prefer to wait and see if anyone notices me. Part of the reason is that when I look at the statistics for this blog, what I often consider to be the best-written material is often the least-viewed. Trying to push up the pageviews will only result in compromising quality, I fear. I also don't have any illusions about this blog being a pathway to something else. The creative fields are being destroyed, and the way to get ahead is by knowing the right people, which I don't. I didn't go to the right schools, and I am constitutionally incapable of "networking" and glad-handing. It's probably held me back in life, but I'm just too goddamned old now to change, and I am comfortable with that. The other path is to be like my friend Chauncey DeVega, and combine hard work, intentionality, and a kind of brilliance that I don't have. I can't pretend to be able do that, so I will just be keeping on doing what I'm doing, with inspiration from the great Charles Bukowski:
I guess I have kept doing this blog because it fills a need that other things in my life don't, and that's good enough for me. Other questions are on my mind, though. I have thought about dumping my "Werner Herzog's Bear" persona and using my real name. If anyone does like what I have to say here, I'd at least like to get credit for it! I also wonder whether I should spin off my music stuff to a separate blog, where I can live out my teenage dream of being a music writer, and people who like my music writing don't have to be subjected to my post-academic rants and political screeds. Anyway, thanks for listening, and I promise to stop navel gazing in the near future.
I started doing it right after the election of 2004, in order to put into words that shock and frustration I felt about George W. Bush getting elected. My friends were also probably tired of getting my long-winded emails sermonizing on this same topic. A friend of mine had started a blog (now defunct) and it seemed like the natural thing to do.
I was not writing to get anybody's attention, but to get out my thoughts and amuse my friends. I also just enjoy writing, and it was nice to do so without any pressure of publication and vetting, which is something that took all the joy out of my academic writing. Back then I was pretty naive, I used my actual name (meaning that potential employers would find the blog) and I gave it the unwieldy name of "Fugitive Streets/Jackal Tombs." The title referenced lines from Proust and Melville. Oh yes, I was still a pretentious grad student back then.
At least my naivety paid off a little. When I met my future wife for the first time, she googled me and found my blog. According to her, what I had written, especially a Beatnik-y piece about hanging out in bars in Lincoln, Nebraska, made me seem interesting and intriguing. That added intrigue that helped me find a woman far out of my league and if for no other reason, has made this blog worth it.
After about three years I decided to scrub my real name and adopt the persona of Werner Herzog's Bear, in homage to one of my favorite film-makers and as kind of a juvenile joke that you'll get if you've seen Grizzly Man. The blog was changed to I Used to Be Disgusted, Now I Try to Be Amused, in reference to one of my favorite Elvis Costello songs. It also fit my attitude at the time, as I was working as a low-paid, overburdened "visiting" professor. By that point I think my writing got a lot better and I started hitting my stride. As always, I just wrote about things that interested me most, mainly music, movies, history, politics, and baseball.
As time went on, especially after I moved to Texas to take a tenure track job that turned into a nightmare, I started writing a lot more about my frustrations with the academic profession. This stuff seemed to get the most readers, perhaps because it came out of a place of unalloyed pain and rage inside of me. After hesitating, I started writing about my specific job situation, which generated some of my best stuff (since it was so genuine), but put me in hot water. A colleague at my job who I made the mistake of befriending ended up joining the mobbing gang tormenting myself and others. I had revealed my blog to him in better times, and after our falling out, he sent a message to me expressing alarm about what I had been writing. Scared of having my cover blown, and traumatized by my experience of bullying, I did one of the hardest things I've ever done: I killed my blog.
I was giving up academia at the time, and so it did feel fitting to start anew, to reaffirm a new chapter in my life. I conceived Notes From the Ironbound being a little different, less full of rants and bitterness and more titled towards longer essays and deep thoughts. A lot of it ended up being me working through the shame and bitterness of having abandoned academia after having fought so hard for my toehold in it.
My blog never turned into a "post-academic" blog, though. I still write about the things that move me, which are pretty much the same things they've always been. It's just me under a different name, not me "branding" myself or playing to a certain niche or popular tastes. I've come to cherish this blog as a creative outlet, and also as a space of comfort. I can write what I like, and don't have to worry about what an editor or peer reviewer thinks of it. Some of my friends have commented to me about how often I am posting these days, and that's because I am writing every day. It makes me happy, and is a better way to while away the evening hours between putting my daughters to sleep and my own bedtime than watching the television. Those hours of the night used to be spent reading or watching arty films, but I just can't hack it anymore. I am so exhausted at the end of the day that I can't pick up a book or play something with subtitles without passing out; I do my reading on the train during my commute and have fallen out of touch with cinema.
Occasionally I have tried to tout the blog a little; I've posted stuff on the DailyKos' diaries section and joined Twitter, which has led to some of my posts getting attention. Despite these efforts, not a lot of folks read this blog. Perhaps I do need to tout my blog more, find a more engaging focus, etc., but I am a plugger, and prefer to wait and see if anyone notices me. Part of the reason is that when I look at the statistics for this blog, what I often consider to be the best-written material is often the least-viewed. Trying to push up the pageviews will only result in compromising quality, I fear. I also don't have any illusions about this blog being a pathway to something else. The creative fields are being destroyed, and the way to get ahead is by knowing the right people, which I don't. I didn't go to the right schools, and I am constitutionally incapable of "networking" and glad-handing. It's probably held me back in life, but I'm just too goddamned old now to change, and I am comfortable with that. The other path is to be like my friend Chauncey DeVega, and combine hard work, intentionality, and a kind of brilliance that I don't have. I can't pretend to be able do that, so I will just be keeping on doing what I'm doing, with inspiration from the great Charles Bukowski:
I guess I have kept doing this blog because it fills a need that other things in my life don't, and that's good enough for me. Other questions are on my mind, though. I have thought about dumping my "Werner Herzog's Bear" persona and using my real name. If anyone does like what I have to say here, I'd at least like to get credit for it! I also wonder whether I should spin off my music stuff to a separate blog, where I can live out my teenage dream of being a music writer, and people who like my music writing don't have to be subjected to my post-academic rants and political screeds. Anyway, thanks for listening, and I promise to stop navel gazing in the near future.
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