after the silence

It has been almost ten days since my previous post, ten days of silence after a torrent of activity. I have been around but quiet. When the year started I was full of ambition, ready to make this blog bustle with liveliness, make it come alive through frequently updated content. Most of all, I was eager to write, write, write. My productivity over the first 12 days when I posted almost daily surprised no one more than me. Getting high on wordcount that increased by the day, I already saw myself as a writer and was, I realized a week ago, neglecting not only work but my life also.

Thus the blog came to a crashing halt. It was conceived as a hobby. It doesn't pay the bills and it won't make me famous, but I am happy to invest some time in it because it is a means of preserving episodes of my life much like a diary would. Even if it’s not always true to every last word, it will later help me recall the exact details of whatever happened, things I might already have forgotten. Digging in the dark corners of my self, unearthing facets that should better stay undisclosed, I find that I also enjoy the thought of feeble immortality by being archived on the web.

Recently, a deeper end has opened in the shallow pond of my vanity, and I've begun to see this blog as a vehicle to distill my inchoate thoughts, fragments for the most part that swirl around my head without much aim when I ride my bike to work in the morning or the tube into Central London, into something slightly more coherent. I have discovered that there is no better way for me to develop and ultimately understand what’s going on inside my head than writing it down. For fear of losing these precious thoughts among the billion bytes on my hard drive and for keeping accounts with myself, I feel forced to write them down openly.

I had also felt forced to write – anything, really – to keep this blog glowing red-hot, even if the thoughts and encounters that made it onto my pages hardly deserved it. This I justified with the purpose outlined at the start of these pages, the practice and development of my writing. The silence over the last week is a sign that I realized my error. Life is about balancing of priorities, and I had come wobbly. Lucky for me, two friends have shown recently how to cruise on two lanes and stay in equilibrium. To highlight their achievements is why I took to the keyboard again.

First, there is a piece in Times Higher Education by a colleague of mine. Rivka is a research associate in much the same position as I am except she feels the urge to leave her current position and move on more forcefully than I do. Her assay is brilliantly composed, with a rather pedestrian experience, the waiting in line to get theater tickets, as the scaffold on which to hang a number of enlightening and amusing contemplations on all sorts of topics. This is what I would like my posts to look like, except a bit shorter of course.

Second is the inclusion of a post of Stephen Curry's in an anthology of the best science blogging of 2008. Stephen is a professor at Imperial who achieved a little bit of fame with a home-cooked movie explaining his research that was extremely well received. He writes topically, and while not all of his posts are science-related, they are all anchored in his work. And even though his audience knows what to expect, they will forever be surprised by details he chooses to focus on and by the delightful twists he presents.

I congratulate Rivka and Stephen on their successes. But this blog is about me, and the reason I mention their accomplishment is that I am grateful to them for pointing out what's important. If you want to get the word out, get it out. If you want people to read what you write, direct your writing, get notice and, optimally, find someone to publish you. If your words are restricted to the little world of personal blogs, what you do is nothing more than a vanity project. There is no significance in your writing and time is likely better spent on other undertakings, like work or leisure with friends.