I started a blog

I feel kind of funny here with my new blog, as if standing on a bare stage, addressing an empty audience. Perhaps I should have no preamble, but commence immediately with the performance.

But I have posted no bills, issued no press release. I haven't even told my mother. So even though it feels awkward to announce this event at its premiere, it feels even less appropriate to fail to announce.

Perhaps I should think of this as a forward, an introduction to the chapters that follow. Alas, those chapters stubbornly remain unwritten.

Perhaps I should base my metaphor on a much less pretentious type of fiction: the business plan. But woe the unwary investor who would back this blog! It has one unpaid staff member, a probable audience of two if you count my husband, three if Mom browses occasionally. It has a scattered focus and will undoubtedly alienate a significant percentage of the people who stumble upon it.

Lacking a metaphor, I shall just close my eyes and commence:

I expect that most of my writing will fall within these broad categories:

• marriage: both mine and the history of and current politics around the institution
• observations on modern life
• essays about the effects of novel communications technology on society
• drivel: very short observations and narratives that aren't very important to the future of the human race

Why am I doing this? Mostly to provide me with a record of me. Years ago, I started making a photocollage of the year's events to send out at New Year's. I really like having that visual record of my life -- it get to enjoy the experiences again when I look at the pictures. I hope that writing about my experiences and observations will similarly make the memories more vivid.

In the end, all we have are memories, so I'd better make them good ones.

Note: You might notice a few entries that have dates before this. Those relate to events that are tied to a particular date. I thought about whether it was more appropriate to date by when I wrote (okay, when I finished writing the entry) or by the date they are tied to, and decided to go by the date they were tied to. Six years from now, that will be the important thing to me.