Going Up?

So, yeah. To the three of you who I haven't already freaked out to, I've been asked to guest blog on By Common Consent for two weeks starting Wednesday! I'm very excited, but also a little scared. How do I write to an audience who doesn't know me and my spherical chickens? I'm very protective of them, you know.

On the other hand, this is my chance to wield some "influence" in the blogging community. Which of course leads me to wonder what the purpose of blogging is. The audience for blogs in general, though ever expanding, is still rather limited, as I realized when I tried to explain the magnitude of my excitement about BCC to some non-blogging friends. Just like everything else, blogging only holds weight if you are part of the "in" community. (This is one of the things that holds me back from wanting to be part of official academia--who wants to write to an audience that small? You've gotta write for the masses to make it worth while! But that's another post.)

So after much inner wrestling, I've decided this: the reason I like blogging is because it's brought dignity back to the form of writing we call the essay. Down-trodden by bad academic jargon and careless students, the blog has once again made the essay (and more generally writing) a viable form of entertainment and art. And it's the kind of writing I like--I have a hard time with fiction (because of characterization, mostly); my poetry's all right, not stellar; but the essay is my forte, for sure. It's just the joy of being able to organize ideas clearly and lead someone else through your thoughts--to unify minds, if only for a moment.

In OChem this morning I sketched out a list of topics I could possibly blog about on BCC as well as here. There were 12. Hugh Nibley class added three more. And I just remembered Soul Force is coming to BYU next week--with one of my former coworkers as a "rider"--which would be interesting to blog about, assuming I'm daring enough to open that can of worms. And then I remember how crazy busy I am reading Middlemarch right now . . . . (Ooh, Middlemarch--good topic! The possibility of a Protestant saint, Eliot says? How about a Mormon one?)

How do people outside of college ever come up with enough content for a blog? All I know is that I feel inundated with more ideas than I have time to develop. I better figure out how to merge a few of these topics together so I don't go insane.