Just as I am ready to get back from vacation and ease into quasi-sabbatical mode, I stumbled across this article, “Happy Blogiversary,” from the WSJ.com. It is a pretty good and rather long article that spells out the “state of affairs” of blogging, at least from the point of view of a rather conservative newspaper about the world of business. This is certainly something that would be useful to teach a variety of different classes for sure.
Actually, it’s one of those articles that, in relationship to my “Blogs as Writerly Spaces” project, I find simultaneously really helpful and really intimidating. It’s helpful because it features a number of famous and semi-famous folks– bloggers and not– talking about why they read/write blogs, and it includes some interesting history. But it’s intimidating because it is one of those articles that, in very basic terms, probably sums up the point I’m trying to make with this project. And if my project can be summed up in a WSJ article, well, is my sabbatical project really a project?
These are normal doubts and misgivings at the beginning of a big project like this, I suppose. It feels a little like working on my dissertation. I recall going through these oscillations where I felt like my diss was literally about everything and therefore impossible, and/or that my diss was common sense and therefore irrelevant. I suspect this project will take some similar turns.
Oh well. I’m just easing into this project. The first things I’m going to do is read and clean my desk, so it’ll be a while before I have to doubt myself too much.