{"id":4228,"date":"2011-01-31T20:41:37","date_gmt":"2011-02-01T04:41:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/?p=4228"},"modified":"2011-01-31T20:50:02","modified_gmt":"2011-02-01T04:50:02","slug":"reading-in-the-archives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2011\/01\/31\/reading-in-the-archives\/","title":{"rendered":"Reading in the archives"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was rooting around in my Google documents just minutes ago and came across two 2006 blog post drafts I’d parked there. I published them to my blog at the time, but hadn’t re-viewed them since then: All Eyes<\/a> (Oct.22, 2006) and Winter will come soon enough<\/a> (Oct.25, 2006).<\/p>\n

Both posts convince me of two things: 1) that I should be leveraging my own archive; and 2) that I’ve become stupider over the past couple of years.<\/p>\n

When I started blogging in 2003, I paid attention to what was said about blogging – what it was “supposed” to be, and what it wasn’t supposed to be. I guess I wasn’t particularly good at following instructions, though, so I never rose anywhere near the ranks where the big A-listers hung out – and instead I usually wrote long, convoluted posts.<\/p>\n

Why? Probably because I had enough belief in my own ability to analyze – and most importantly: to synthesize – ideas. I continued to pursue my “big” ideas, irrespective of my marginal status and my inability to be popular. So what if my texts were an acquired taste and had a readership of …a few? These few were my<\/strong> readers, and that’s what counted. And so I wrote what I wanted to write.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>While it bothered me that popular bloggers insisted that one should write at a Grade 8 level or that one shouldn’t write large blocks of text and that one should always break text up with lots of images and bullet points and paragraph headings, I kept going along in my style. Why? Because it helped me think – and I happened to be thinking about important matters.<\/p>\n

That changed.<\/p>\n

Somehow, in the last few years I lost touch with my intellectual side, the side that kept me thinking about important things. And it wasn’t other bloggers or A-list pundits who convinced me to lose that touch. It was my local environment. Here, in this island city, I tried to be a local<\/em> pundit, and lord, what a disaster that was. I wrote for a print publication, which garnered me even less feedback than my blog posts had. I tried writing simply, because I was made to understand that overly complex texts aren’t popular. But I still wasn’t getting any resonance, even if I tried to write at a Grade 8 level. Therefore, it must all be my fault, I concluded. In 2007 the local mainstream media ripped me off<\/a>, which hammered home the insight that ideas count for nothing when there’s an old boys’ network and $$ at stake.<\/p>\n

Things got worse: in 2009 I also got sucked into a very fraught local political issue<\/a>, which nearly completely destroyed my sense of …being able to make sense<\/em>. That disaster happened in the slipstream of another lowlight<\/em> of 2008, the aftereffects of which have dragged on for over two years: a municipal election that swept into power an awful mayor and council, further alienating me from Victoria. The 2011 election promises no relief, incidentally.<\/p>\n

Doubly alienated – from my academic self as well as my engaged civic self – I have spent the last many months floundering. I’ve thrown myself into other projects and subjects, but my output has gone to the lowest common denominator. I tried to make myself understood<\/strong> locally, and that was my personal Waterloo. So much time wasted… talking to …whom? The town closed ranks and shut me out.<\/p>\n

And I have lost years<\/em> of serious thinking. What an idiot I’ve been to waste my time like this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was rooting around in my Google documents just minutes ago and came across two 2006 blog post drafts I’d parked there. I published them to my blog at the time, but hadn’t re-viewed them since then: All Eyes (Oct.22, 2006) and Winter will come soon enough (Oct.25, 2006). Both posts convince me of two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1652,1071,678,1418,1903],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authenticity","category-creativity","category-ideas","category-victoria","category-writing"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4228"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4238,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228\/revisions\/4238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}