Steven Douglas Maloney

Posts Tagged ‘Blogging’

This is one of those awkward, personal blog posts.  I have not been blogging regularly for some time.  While my life has been fantastic the last two years, the trajectory of my blogging has, in general, been heading in the other direction.  What has caused the decline?  Several major events.  I have lived in three different cities, I got married, I finished my dissertation, I produced five articles for publication.  But I think that the most devastating blow was that when the halcyon days of Nashville is Talking gave way, I lost my sense of community as a blogger, and I haven’t really recovered.  

There are not really many blogs that I read that read my posts in return.  I’ve lost that sense of reciprocal exchange through blogging because I read blogs that are above my station as a blogger.  And the less I blog, the worse the problem.  There are some exceptions of course. Flattered doesn’t begin to cover having David Estlund and Peter Levine post comments on my site.  But overall, I have felt lost.  

I don’t really have any conception of where I live, my career is in limbo, my friends are all far away, and I just have not felt like I knew what direction I wanted to go with this blog.  Should I specialize more? Professionalize?  What should I be conversant in?  

Well, here it is.  Despite the irregular postings, and the rough couple of years, I think I have come back around in my aims for Cows and Graveyards all the way back to where I started.  I don’t want to be conversant about any one particular thing, I just want to be conversant.  I want to share what I’m thinking and seeing with you, dear reader, and I want to hear from you also.  I have missed blogging like the way I did two years ago, and I sat here this morning and said to myself, “all in, or all out: which is it?”  It’s all in.  I’m back in business.