Why I Blog

“This guy”:http://www.streightsite.blogspot.com/ is writing “a book about blogs”:http://www.blogpros.blogspot.com/ and asked me to contribute. Frankly the website looks like the Yes Men doing a parody of a late-nineties Fast Company type consulting firm. But the letter he sent me was only slightly formletter-ish and he even sent me a ‘reminder’ that I hadn’t replied to him, which I thought indicated either 1) some level of personal oversight or 2) some commendable scripting abilities on the mass email front. The responses that he’s gotten so far say things like “by spending my time thinking about what I’m writing rather than how I’m writing it and how I’m going to get it published, I’ve been able to refine my weblogs over time to find the synergistic intersection between my professional interests and those of my industry space.” Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you today I think about the synergistic intersection of my industry space _all the time_, as evinced by the questions and answers provided below:

Why did you decide to start your Golublog anthropology blog?

My blog began as a result of fascism and genetic engineering.

In October 1999 I arrived in the Porgera Valley of Enga Province, Papua New Guinea with funds from a schwanky Fulbright grant burning a hole in my pocket to begin what ended up being a two year stay. There I shared a 32 square meter tin-sided house with a family of five. The result: little meterage per person, although they were very kind and gave me more than my fair share of space. Like most anthropologists, I found my initial immersion in a foreign culture exciting but also unrelenting and deeply exhausting. Soon, following a time-honored tradition, I found myself resorting to increasingly desperate attempts at self-deception and escapism to ignore the fact that I had, in fact, signed up for fieldwork in a place which lacked not only _biftek au poivre_ and the occasional oaky cabernet, but showers, bread, laundry, and beds. As I honed my ability to judge exactly how many fleas were in my sleeping bag, I retreated further and further into the few escapist venues that I had brought with me from the First World.

While less technically adept anthropologists reveled in literature and novels I choose the much more engrossing expedient of immersing myself in _Civilization: Call To Power_. As I sunk deeper into denial about my situation my ability to play Civ increased beyond even the eldritch levels of competence I had acquired while procrastinating during the composition of my M.A. Slowly, however, even this grew to be less and less solace as the AI’s ability to challenge me decreased. My mood was particularly darkened by the fact that the only way to triumph over the AI at the very highest levels of play involved ruling with a fascist government, developing genetic engineering, and then plowing through my opponent’s continents with scientifically hardened browshirted troops. It was at that point that I turned off the computer, gave into escapist fiction, and picked up Anna Karenina. In fact I read a lot of good books during my fieldwork — _Gravity’s Rainbow_, _Wind Up Bird Chronicles_, _Cryptonomicon_, _The Brothers Karamozov_, _Infinite Jest_, _Underworld_, and, incongruously, a copy of _Cry, The Beloved Country_ that was in my house when I arrived.

It is very common for graduate students to get halfway through their doctoral programs before they realize exactly how much they have given up when they signed up for a Ph.D. They watch their friends get married, settle down, have kids, have houses, have jobs, have _fun_ — all while they are still living on US$10,000 a year and cooking the same Economy Lentil Diet they ate during college. But this realization never really hits home more fully until you are in the central highlands of Papua New Guinea reading _Anna Karenina_ and contemplating how many fleas are in your sleeping bag. My interest in Papua New Guinea dated back to my studies as an undergraduate and so my arrival in the field represented the culmination of over a half-decade study of the country. It was supposed to be the culmination of an already-promising young career. It ended up reminding me how much I missed the things I had given up to get there.

As a result I swore that when I got back I would try to ressurect that creative part of myself I had lost track of when I became a social scientist. When finally returned in late 2001 I found I had missed two very big years. My first reaction to coming home was “What do you mean George Bush is President again?!” The second thing was Harry Potter — the first time I heard the name of Harry Potter was on the BART on my way into San Francisco when two people reading books with the name “Harry Potter” emblazoned on them starting talking to each other and mutually admitted to ‘reading all of his books over and over again’. I assumed he was some sort of Fundamentalist Christian self-help guru, something it would take a _very_ embarassing gaffe at a party to realize was not, in fact, strictly true. 9/11 happened less than two months after I arrived in-country, but now is not the right time to talk about that. Finally, I arrived only to find I had missed the internet bubble, and so I went through all of the hype and excitement about the internet that took most people two years to work through in the space of a couple of afternoons. What else could I do but start a blog?

Over time my blog has morphed from a personal diary (now intensely embarassing to me but mundane to others) to an attempt to think out loud about what had happened to the internet since I left it (which temporarily turned me into a pretty well-known blogger), to a place to experiment in fiction (which resulted in two novels). I blogged stuff that should have been privateand figured out, like so many of us to, where I felt comfortable drawing lines. In particular I realized that entries about how drunk I had gotten while talking about Levinas at parties were not what I needed to make sure I had a web presence that would facilitate getting a faculty position. Also I realized that I had a limited about of mojo in me and I had to choose between writing my dissertation (and, by extension, other scholarly work) and experimenting as a writer, blogger, poet, healer, lover etc. It was a difficult choice, for I know the world needs some good good loving. Nonetheless, I decided to focus more on anthropology. This ended up working well since it corresponded with a growth in my own interest in copyright reform and open source scholarship, so the latest version of this blog seems to make sense. At least in my head.

There’s a longer, better story involving “snow monkeys”:http://alex.golub.name/oldlog/archives/2002_03.html#000025 which sketches in the details starting from my much earlier history in highschool, etc. but I’ll leave that to one side for now.

What do you think makes a blog successful? (attributes, measurements) — and your blog in particular?

In general? The synergistic intersection between someone’s professional interests and their industry space. In my case? Lightsabers.