For The Ten-Year-Blogoversary: Thoughts One

I'm going to do posts about blogging and what I have learned and forgotten and so on.  You can give me presents during the week or two weeks this continues!  Or not, as you please.

After reading through some of my early archives I realized that I don't do Echidne much, anymore, as in the avatar of the Goddess With Opinions.  How she came to be is a boring story but she wasn't plucked out of pure air.  Or she didn't pluck me that way, either.  The role is helpful for getting a particular voice out.  It is my voice, but it's not the only one I have.

I also realized that I'm much more aware, now, of which topics will cause blog wars and flaming, and because I dislike them, I tend to avoid such topics until my conscience puts me on the rack and demands a post or it will annihilate me. 

There's a loss in that innocence I then had.  On the other hand, I learned much in the process, including when something came out of my own arrogance or privilege, if you wish.

Finally, there are posts in my archives about people and events that we have utterly forgotten.  It would be wonderful if I could learn to predict which things have staying power and which things rapidly sink into that memory hole.  Still, one reason why I write less and less about the horse race and ballet critic aspects of American politics is because those are the bits at the bottom of the memory hole, even a year or two later.  They ultimately do not matter, even though their impact on the quality of our political debates is deleterious.  Since I can't figure how to alter that aspect I pretty much let it slide now.