Take This Blog and Shove It
Meet the New Poop, Same as the Old Poop
I’m pooped, folks. That’s not to say that you’ve any evidence of much activity, but—truth be told—I’m kind of drained. There’s this new fetish for immediacy, for recency, that’s propagated specifically by blogging, and RSS subscription. The archetypal blog is updated at least daily, and though there is tolerance for longer publishing cycles, there is an unmistakable current of impatience seething all around the blogosphere. I haven’t kept a pace like that, but I’ve caught myself under the weight of an expectation (mostly on my part) to do so.
Millions of people around the world (myself included) hit their RSS feeds several times a day, jonesin’ for a content fix. I applaud this, actually: there are some interesting if not necessarily profound sociological ramifications and emergent patterns in this orgy of blather, insatiability, and technology. I’ve come across people who beautifully articulate points of view and observations I might not otherwise have found, at least not in quite the way I found them. I am, in the balance of things, a better person for having joined the party, not least because I’ve had a motivation to write.
Still, blogging reinforces ways of connecting to people and ideas which are fairly narrow. The most obvious reason is the decidedly mercurial nature of blogging, both in its writing and its reading. Blogging is all about now, about quick doses of today, and sometimes pieces of tomorrow. There is so much more than today, so much more than vague bits of tomorrow; but that kind of stuff tends to be relegated to—well, you know—those book things.
So What?
Yeah, nothing’s broken. I’m sure there are some sociologists and neo-Luddites wringing their hands worrying about the damage being done to our psyches, but that’s what they do. Fundamentally, this whole thing is just people being people, with computers in place of plowshares. That’s why the Coca-Cola dreams only come true in highly localized circumstances, and why a prophylactic against the internet is not a prophylactic against our dirtier selves.
I want to do something more than simply wow readers with yet another day’s cleverly-packaged minutiae (yes, that’s right, I’m a genius). I want to create something that transcends the daily, something with lasting power; and the standard-issue blog doesn’t cut it. Again, that’s fine. There’s a place for the mercurial, and a place for the glacial. I plan on presenting each.
Time Keeps on Slippin’, Slippin’, Slippin’…
So, I’m going on hiatus. I’m scheduling a few months of time away from this site, away from the incessant fiddling with the layout and pondering how to turn my expansive observations and thoughts on, for instance, the lingering effects of Katrina and what they show of human nature, into a concise four-paragraph treatment. There are other duties and electives, on- and offline, to which I owe my attention.
Among them is an intimate and exhaustive reflection on the short life and constant memory of my daughter, Elizabeth. Elizabeth currently exists, as much as she can, as the ghostly connection between all the things I have to remind me of her. That’s the best I can hope for, but I can do something to strengthen those connections. Something substantive, something more than the cloud of photos I have hanging in my cube or on the computers as screensavers. I owe this to her, to myself, to Danielle, and to all the people who did and didn’t know Elizabeth and showed how much they cared for us when she died. So many people did so from a distance, and so this reflection will be a way to belatedly include them in her life, insofar as we can.
The rest of my family deserves my attention as well. I have a love and children from whose interests I have, to one degree or another, shied away. I am in the middle of the beginning of a divorce. I have not focused myself toward these considerations nearly enough.
There are, of course, less dramatic things to which I should attend. A growing stack of books. A growing notebook of story (and possibly article) ideas. Imminent reentry into academia, toward completion of a B.S. in mathematics. A growing sense of ennui, or disaffection, or whatever.
The Works
So, I’ll be gone for a while. I’m attempting, in true 43 Folders fashion, to organize the fractured pieces of life (there’s no reason to expect them not to be fractured, but at least you can stack them neatly), so I’ve decided on a return date: May 1st. That allows me some time to sort out and engage my life, to take up some projects I’ve excused myself from for too long, and come back refreshed and deliberate.
The recent monkeying around with the design here was actually less random and indulgent than previous attempts, but rather grew from wanting to give easiest access to all of Boxing Jewels. I also had one of too few epiphanies, about how to present all the meta data, and feel that things have come through rather nicely. There is one last basic element I’m missing—the search tool—but that will just have to wait. The templates for the search page and the comments I’m making use of need a bit of work, removing cruft and sorting things and whatnot, and I’ve just got to be done else I’ll tweak ad nauseum. At least everything works in Firefox and Internet Explorer —though you IE users may notice some wonkiness in the Wayback Machine. It can’t be helped at the moment, and this would be an opportune time to upgrade to Firefox 1.5 anyway.
Lights Off
That’s it. I’ve whittled my Bloglines subscriptions to a very select six subscriptions. I’m done with the late-night Xboxing. The signal-to-noise ratio among recent movie viewing has decreased pretty dramatically (though Adaptation bumped it up noticeably), so I think I’ve seen enough for now. In short, I’m cutting away the bulk of my little indulgent distractions. It’s time.
See you in May.
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