Blurbs From a Blogger

It occurred to me this morning, as I was walking Sourdough, that I have every right to call myself a "Blogger". It came as a bit of a surprise, as most revelations of the obvious do, and it caused me to see myself quite differently. Now, I realize that "real" Bloggers, whether full-time or not, celebrated or reviled, actually get more than 3 page views a day (I think that's my average, if I count my own visits to the blog ...), write about important matters (like "Obama needs a New Hairdo and so do You"), generate lots of publicity, and contribute to the general course of human affairs, from behind (or is it in front of ... ?) the near-anonymity of a computer terminal.

But, as you, dear Reader, have no doubt noticed, there IS a new look to this blog. And moving away from the classic blog platform (goodbye outmoded javascript slideshow ...) to Blogger's WordPress-Wannabe Widget Filled Universe has prompted me to cast a retrospective glance at my early output. I'm in the process of cleaning up the interface as well as re-visiting some of my earlier posts. Reading some of the stuff that I wrote way back – especially from 2001-4 – for instance, I'm struck by how prolific I was in those days. Of course, prolific doesn't mean the writing is good or even thoughtful. But there was just a lot of stuff. In "those" heady days, I used a really cheesy platform called "Free Open Diary". Then it was just words – no pictures, no music, no video – just words, a lot of them. And it was great fun then, as there was a relative large and vibrant community of Open Diarists in the school where I taught. There were inevitable attempts by the more daring or cheeky of my students to make overt references to each diary entry whenever I stepped into class, but I managed to keep those worlds somewhat separate, though inextricably bound as my entries were often commentaries on what was going on in school and in the classroom. In retrospect, I think writing on the thing shaped the kind of teacher (and possibly person) I became in those years and created all sorts of opportunities for interaction with students that my official school persona may not have afforded. I'm sure that blogging is now taken for granted by teachers as a means of communicating certain "unmentionables" to students, but I'm glad I was involved in it at a time when not that many people (at least people I knew) wrote on blogs.

So, patiently, with much perseverance, I'm going back to these old entries and straightening them out, correcting grammar and spelling where I find errors, and putting them onto their proper blog page. (In switching platforms, I plonked whole months into a single entry and haven't really sieved through them properly). In the meantime, I've created a "Blast From the Past" link on my new blog interface (using the nice link widget) where I'll put entries that strike a chord with me in this re-vamping exercise. And of course, I'll continue to feel happy about calling myself a Blogger.

Now back to the Dissertation.