Jeremy's Weblog

I recently graduated from Harvard Law School. This is my weblog. It tries to be funny. E-mail me if you like it. For an index of what's lurking in the archives, sorted by category, click here.

Saturday, September 25, 2004

New York Times Magazine article this week about political weblogs. Stuff I don't read, mostly. Wonkette, Daily Kos, Joshua Micah Marshall, Pandagon. Pandagon is good stuff. I'm happy when they get publicity because they come across as nice guys on their blog. Wonkette comes off pretty poorly in the article; Marshall comes off pretty well. In any case, it's a good read. I don't know what else to say about it. I could make a nice segue into something about what happens to blogs as they become more mainstream and a handful of people are actually making real money from them. I could probably sign up for Google ads and make $10 a month or something I guess. :) I got as far as taking the "virtual tour" on Google ads a few weeks ago. Seemed like too much of a hassle for a half-cent every time someone clicks on something.

[This is the part of the post where I make it all about me, so if you don't really care what's going on inside my head, you're free to scroll down to the next post and skip this one.]

Part of me hates reading these articles, because they make me ask myself what the heck I'm doing with this weblog and what it's for. And I don't know the answer. Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago, and, without really thinking, here's what I said: my weblog puts my writing out there. That's why I do it. Because if I'm going to write stuff, I may as well put it in a position to be found. So if I'm meant to be found -- if someone's meant to read my stuff, like my stuff, and decide I can somehow help them, in something they're doing, who knows what -- I mean, you think I can do something for you, I have bandwidth, tell me, I'm terrible at saying no -- then I'm here. I am not hard to find. If the fates want me to succeed -- if the fates are sending opportunities out looking for me -- this makes it very easy for them to find me. Much easier than if I wrote every day in a diary and locked in inside a drawer. No one's finding that.

Ok, so I said something like that, and then I looked at it from the other direction. If I'm not meant to do this -- if I'm supposed to go work at a law firm and cry myself to sleep every night, and I'm not meant to somehow stumble into some writing-related gig that'll give me a reason not to impale myself with a letter opener one day over a stack of thousand-page contracts, then is it still worth it? Well, sure it is. This is fun. I like getting e-mails from people who like what I write. I even like getting e-mails from people who hate what I write. I like feeling like I'm part of some weblog community of like-minded people. I like having somewhere to put my thoughts and ideas. Every time I think about taking a break from doing this, the break lasts fifteen seconds, because I'm going to think of stuff to write anyway, and so what do I have to lose by posting it? Why should I just let it sit there. People don't want to read it, you won't. It feels more productive than watching TV. Much more productive. Even if it's not, and I'm just kidding myself.

And the thought that ten seconds after I press "publish," someone can read whatever I've written and have a reaction, any reaction, or even no reaction at all, is pretty cool. That any moment of any day something good could happen from all this, even if it never does -- to me that feels somehow comforting. I don't know why.

See, I warned you. :) Okay, enough in my head. Back to being funny. If the fates decide that's what I'm supposed to be tonight.