<< Where Language Can’t Reach | Home | Level of Grace >>
The Title is Neither Accidental nor Incidental
Paintbrush: I’m bored.
Elenita: Oh, poor baby.
Paintbrush: I like you more when you’re not sarcastic.
Elenita: You’d like me a lot more if you weren’t complaining so much this week.
Paintbrush: Like you never complain where you’re stuck in bed for a week [with the flu].
Elenita: I guess.
Paintbrush: I’d complain to you a lot less if you gave me more reading material.
Elenita: You should be careful what you wish for.
It’s no big surprise that I don’t write here a lot. And there are a number of reasons why this is, but the most relevant one right now is that I don’t feel very comfortable with using this space as a dumping ground. Lots of other people feel fine about using their blogs as spaces for really short pieces and short link lists, and while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, I just don’t have the same kind of comfort level with the idea.
(Yes, I’m weird. Surely, this can’t come as a shock to most people.)
The thing is—I really wish that weren’t the case. I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I read millions of words during this election season; I regularly read tens of thousands of words each day. And since I regularly read so much, I regularly find articles and essays and whatnot that I think are cool, and I want to share them. I used to get around my weird blog-posting block by sending the links to friends (plus short commentary) via email, and it worked, but I’m amazed that I didn’t get any complaints about all the messages that I was sending to people’s inboxes.
For a while, I thought about starting a second blog for just links and commentary; I told Oso when I was in California that would be my new project once I returned to New York. But then, life got crazy and I got lazy, and it couldn’t get done on top of everything else I’ve been dealing with. I thought it never would never happen—and then I rediscovered del.icio.us.
Long story short, I’m now using del.icio.us to power ”Elenita’s Publicly Shared Reading List of Übergeekery” instead of bookmarks. I post to it, at least so far, several times a day and link to anything I find interesting—absolutely anything, in any of the four languages I’m competent in. That can include links to recipes or skeins of yarn I can’t create a wishlist for, but will probably be overwhelmingly inclined toward things like politics or economics or open source or languages (both human and computer-based); the title is neither accidental nor incidental. It really will be a more well-rounded sort of peek into my interests, if not my brain.
For now, the blog and the linked list are going to remain separate; I won’t announce my own posts in the linked list, and vice versa. You’re welcome to bookmark my del.icio.us site, though, or use the RSS feed associated with it.
For those brave enough to use this thing, I have only one more thing to say: if you regret using this, go blame Paintbrush. It wouldn’t be here if he complained so much. Really.
Satisfied now? :p