this field is required

I feel oblig­ated to write on this blog, and it con­stantly hangs over my head, so to speak.

I was think­ing of alle­vi­at­ing this uncom­fort­able state by spruc­ing up the site & mak­ing efforts to attract new read­ers, in the hopes that I would then be moti­vated to blog more and have more fun doing it.

How­ever, I decided that it would make more sense just to quit blog­ging, at least for a while. Writ­ing good term papers, then a dis­ser­ta­tion and for aca­d­e­mic jour­nals, is about all the writ­ing I can handle.

I had hoped that the blog would be a good way to get com­ments on things I’m writ­ing or plan­ning to write, but there are two prob­lems with this.

The first prob­lem is that, as an unestab­lished aca­d­e­mic, I really can’t afford to put ideas out where they have even a small chance of being stolen. (Not to say that I have any ideas worth steal­ing, of course! Just wish­ful think­ing). It would be not only morally wrong but also rather impru­dent to take ideas from a big and famous blog; not so much in the case of a smaller one.

More dan­ger­ous, though, is the prob­lem of online expo­sure and get­ting Googled. I am pretty care­ful not to iden­tify myself on here, but it is surely pos­si­ble to fig­ure out who I am just using the inter­net. The aca­d­e­mic job mar­ket is SO INCREDIBLY COMPETITIVE, so I want to exer­cise cau­tion with my online pres­ence. I must avoid giv­ing poten­tial employ­ers any rea­son to weed me out of a pool of appli­cants; a blog with unusual views could eas­ily pro­vide such a reason.

As a result of the these two prob­lems, I tend to blog about top­ics: 1)upon which I have noth­ing novel to say, and 2)that are uncon­tro­ver­sial. This is a recipe for blog dis­as­ter! No won­der I am so bored with it. But, since I believe the prob­lems I dis­cussed to be gen­uine, my blog is des­tined to remain bor­ing until some­thing about my cirum­stances changes (such as, grad­u­at­ing and get­ting a professorship).

So, ciao for now! Thanks for play­ing. Don’t worry, I have no plans to quit read­ing blogs, so I’ll “see” most of you around. I’d be surpised if I never blogged ever again, because I really love the idea of it, but now is not the time.

• Book­mark on Delicious
• Digg this post
• Like on Facebook
• Buzz
• share via Reddit
• Share with Stumblers
• Tweet
• Sub­scribe to the com­ments on this post
• Email a friend