Two Years

Today is the second anniversary of this blog. I thought about commemorating the date by linking to my very first post, but I’d rather not embarrass myself, or waste your time—much of what I blogged about then would barely rise to the level of a Tweet now. That says something about how much about how much blogging has changed in a short 700 or so days, and indeed you don’t have to look far to find people who’ll tell you that blogging is a dying if not dead exercise.

But I persist, because doing it still satisfies the chief goal I set for myself when I started—to become a better reader. When I began, I figured I’d spend, say, six months or so minding my own business until I figured out what I was doing, then make some kind of announcement about the project. Of course, the literary blogosphere is too tightly knit to let you mind your own business for very long; I received a nice note by A Prominent Litblogger less than a week in. That’s a happily unexpected side-effect of blogging: Doing this has introduced me to a lot of smart people I wouldn’t know otherwise, and helped start a few friendships as well. That, too, is a reason to keep going.

As for “figuring out what I was doing,” nuts to that—I gave up on that along time ago. I have a few tics and routines, but as a general rule I click on “new post” not exactly sure about where I want to go. (That’s probably painfully obvious sometimes, but I make no great claims for the quality of this enterprise—these are just “notes,” remember.) What’s flattering is that so many people have shown up, and are willing to watch me work it all out in public. Thank you for reading.