I caved...

...and here I am. I have a blog. Me. I can think of at least 2 people who are making fun of me for doing this, but they can get over it (Yes, I'm talking about you, Gus and Brad). I talk to them enough that this isn't so much for them anyway. I'm not a Facebook-er, and though I have a MySpace page I rarely use it (got it for my recent 10 year high school reunion).

Last year I probably would have made fun of myself. I don't lose a lot of sleep over it, but I'm not much of a fan of how, with every step, our communication becomes more and more impersonal and detached. As if email, instant messaging, and text messaging aren't enough to keep us from actually talking to each other, now we can blog or update our Facebook page and let people passively keep in touch with us. If they want. Or not. Or whatever.

Yes, I know that is a bit of a Grandpa Simpson point of view, so please don't think I'm that cynical. (NOTE: I even resisted cell phones since I didn't have a "real" job when they became prolific but gave in to their convenience eventually.) For what it's worth, I do think it's nice to have an easy mechanism for keeping in touch with friends. My family's blog is probably the better source for that kind of information. The Wife does a great job of keeping it updated, especially with pictures of The Daughter, who provides us with a pretty steady stream of cute pictures for me to brag about. (Aside: since The Daugher looks quite a bit like me, how egotistical is it for me to think she's cute? Discuss.) Our blog has links to some of our friends' blogs, and with few exceptions they're mostly scrapbook-type pages that do well to keep up to date with each other's lives and kids. Since the scrapbooking gene is apparently activated with the assumption of marriage vows in young women, and since blogging is way easier than actually scrapbooking and allows you to share your stuff pretty easily, more power to all the scrapbook bloggers out there.

I'm thinking that this blog instead will be something of a dorky release for me. I'll probably hit up sports, some politics, religion, office stuff, movies, food, personality quirks, profitless promotion of pop culture that I enjoy, and other such subjects both trivial and less so. To a fault I'll admit, I have an opinion about most anything (though not necessarily an educated one). But, since I don't spend any time in bars and since The Wife has lovingly and patiently endured my diatribes so well, I figure I'll give her a break and subject you all to them. The upshot is that it will end up being a better snapshot of who I am than my journal, and I'll have something of a creative outlet.

Hope you enjoy. Comments and suggestions for posts welcome.

Follow-up: Here's a link to a good article from the L.A. Times about the potential drag on the workday that email can create. I've personally not been busy enough at either of my post-grad jobs that I've experienced any of this, but I had co-workers who dealt with the inability to keep up on a daily basis.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-et-email31-2008jul31,0,3104453.story?page=1