March 16th, 2009
Hi, Mom! I bet you’ve noticed I’m not updating my blog very often. Well, after a little more than a month of blogging, I’ve decided that it’s not for me. This doesn’t mean I’m giving up The Sword and the Olive Branch. I thought of the name first, and it’s too good to let go and risk letting some insecure douchebag turn it into another left-wing circle jerk. Besides, I’ll still have something to post every lunar eclipse (and I’ll still be cross-posting those occasional items on Modern Conservative until further notice).
I underestimated how much work it takes to be a good blogger. I expected to hit the ground running, my writing meshing seamlessly with my blogging. Instead, it takes me hours to post three short paragraphs and cross-post it on Modern Conservative. In fact, here’s a synopsis of every weekday of my first month of blogging.
1. Wake up at 5:15 a.m. (sometimes 5:30) to go to work at 6:00.
2. Work. Spend lunch catching up on the news. Hopefully find something worth writing about.
3. Leave work between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00ish. Eat a snack. Talk to my girlfriend.
4. If I found something worth writing about during lunch, I’ll research it. Half the time I’ll find out whatever I thought may have been interesting really wasn’t, and I will have to resort to step five.
5. If I didn’t find something interesting during lunch, or gave up on what I first had in mind, I’ll go over to Feministing to see if they have any unintentionally funny material. I’ve been waiting for an overwrought, poetic narrative, ala Andrea Dworkin, to pop up (I have a perfect response ready for it whenever it happens) but to their credit, the chicks at feministing are less melodramatic than their older, second-wave sisters. If I don’t find anything there, I’ll troll the internet (for longer than I’m willing to admit here) looking for something relevant to write about.
6. I will eventually either write a short piece about current events, or I’ll finish off something I’ve had simmering in the mental crock-pot for a few days. This takes hours, for I’m not an efficient writer.
7. I will look for typos and edit my post (No, this isn’t redundant to me).
8. I will look for typos and edit my post, again.
9. I will tell my girlfriend why I’m not asleep yet. Half-asleep, she will kindly help me look for typos and edit my post.
10. I will post on my website first.
11. I will look for typos one last time before I have to correct them on two websites.
12. Satisfied, I will post the same thing at Modern Conservative.
13. I will find a typo.
14. Fuck!
15. I will correct the typos.
16. Finally, I tentatively shut down the computer while several things are still spinning in my head (did I catch all the grammatical mistakes? Is it formatted correctly? Are all the links the same color?)
17. I will go to sleep somewhere between midnight and 3:00 a.m., only to wake up before 6:00 a.m. to start the entire process again.
If it isn’t evident, the effort I put into blogging isn’t worth the reward. This isn’t a bitter “I’m not getting any traffic, so give me pity” post. While I’m sure it would be slightly more difficult to cut my losses if I had more readers, the time I put into my little on-line diary isn’t worth the time it takes away from everything else. Besides, I’m conservative, so I take victimhood too seriously to cynically use it as a tool for eliciting sympathy from others.
I’m still going to occasionally contribute something online, and I’m still going to read blogs and keep a close eye on my favorite blogs, especially my air family. Although from now on, I’m going to show a complete disregard for blogging etiquette. Since I didn’t get it in the first place, this won’t take any effort. Oh, and if I haven’t answered your e-mail yet, it’s because I haven’t looked at my website’s inbox since February. Sooner or later I’ll find the sheet of paper with my e-mail password on it. Probably later, when I feel like deleting 84,000 messages asking me if I want to approve spam.
To be honest, I am upbeat. I think my short blogging career (I am using this in the glibbest sense) has caused me to move on to something more my style. Somewhere in between my junior year and my John Belushi (second senior) year of college, I realized that all I truly want is to get a master’s degree and some teaching credentials so I can become a professor at a small college. The more I reflect on my experience blogging, the more I think that if I’m willing to get four hours of sleep a night for no tangible benefit, I can work just as hard for a college degree that will pay off in the long run. So what not just apply again, and actually go to the school after I’m admitted?
The idea of teaching the little I know, combined with learning every day on the job, is something of a dream to me. Sure, I’ll have to deal with self-righteous twenty-year olds, but that’s what the shotgun is for (just kidding). I want to grow intellectually every day for the rest of my life; one of the best opportunities to do that would presumably be in an academic institution (at least one that isn’t beholden to political activism).
As for my own ideals, I can make more of difference leaving a strong, enduring impression on a few people rather than a passing impression on many. I want to do my small, individual part to change education, one the left’s pillars, from the inside (you have no idea how much the intellectually fraudulent “teaching for social justice” school of thought disgusts me). I want to become the conservative professor on campus, although I think I can be much more than a mere political being. But enough daydreaming; now it’s just a matter of doing it.
Bonus! Things I won’t miss about blogging.
1. 700 spam e-mails every two weeks.
2. Wordpress doing weird things to my post when I type my draft online.
3. Microsoft word doing even weirder things to my post when I type it offline.
4. Me doing the weirdest things to my post as I’m trying to fix whatever Microsoft or Wordpress did to it in the first place!
5. Staying up until 1:00 a.m., thinking of something thoughtful to say about on breaking news I don’t care a whole lot about. I’m interested in politics, but I’m not a political junkie. I’m much more interested in the doctrinal disputes between schools of thought than house bill 8T.48B. Besides, if you pay attention long enough, current events tend to be less compelling remakes of past events.
6. Posting something at 3:00 a.m., and finding a typo at noon.
See you this summer! Or fall! Or 2011!