Saturday, November 05, 2005

The Terrible Twos



My blog will be two years old on Monday. Will it start acting up and throwing temper tantrums? I'm not sure. Reading some of my early posts shows that I had no idea what I was going to do with this here blog, and some days it feels that the blog is a house, like an old beer-smelling pub, full of loud voices and even laughter. It has nothing to do with me, then. I don't explain this very well, but it is clear to me that the blog has decided to have its own life, to do its own thing, pretty much.

I started the blog for two reasons. One was the desire to force myself to write a little, the other the feeling of suffocating silence I experienced when I couldn't read enough voices like my own (booming, goddessy, correct). Both these goals have now been met, quite amply, and the internet today is rich in much better feminist writers than I can ever be. But I have developed a third reason for the blog, and that is the fun of having one, the great joy I have in the discussions that go on in the comments threads, getting to know so many intelligent and charming people. Also the adulation, of course...

The title of this post does have a point: Where should the blog go next? Will it develop a clearer personality, a deeper expertise? I love being a renaissance goddess, flittering here and there, depending on whatever gives me that inner beep that tells I want to write about it. But this is not a good marketing angle. I should specialize and give more in-depth analyses of economics (the field I know most about, but then it's boring) or I should make this into a group blog so that there is something fresh and interesting every day. Or the blog should become a real political blog, talking tactics and strategy. Or I could just ignore the marketing angles altogether, which is pretty much what I have done so far.

This is a selfish post. It is selfish to have a blog and to dare to assume that one has something worthy to blog about. The other half of me finds this post deplorable, but then that is the half that stays home when I go carousing, too, and the half that does the cleaning and vacuuming. Good old dull Echidne. Too bad that she has to be dragged through all this.