catching up

Well, it's been a while since I've updated this blog. A blog is cool idea, a great tool for communication, for expressing opinions...unless you don't know what your opinion is!! I've found myself in this situation over the past six months or so, and haven't had much to say. I kind of doubt this little blog of mine is read by anyone, so it really shouldn't matter what I say here, whether it sounds dumb or silly or not won't matter. Still, the fact that it ends up on the internet somehow lends to blog-writing a weightiness that normal journal-writing does not provide.

I have spent some time reading blogs of others out there. And I can say that there are 1) a lot of folks with opinions, well-expressed as well as badly written; 2) a lot of idiots out there writing blogs; 3) a few really well-done and funny blogs.

A couple of favorites:

The Julie/Julia Project is an amazing blog that appears to have come to an end, but it is so worth going back and re-reading it from the beginning. (the link here is for the first page in the blog) The blog author is now writing a book, based on the blog I think, but her initial experiment was to cook her way through all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in just a year. Along the way readers were treated to descriptions of kitchen triumphs and disasters and a bit of life in NYC. This is a very funny writer and I am looking forward to reading her book when it is published.

Another one that I've recently been reading is the Big Time Food Issues Road Trip blog. This one is about a woman who has suffered from bulimia for many years, who is now travelling cross country with her husband on a motorcycle, examining her food issues along the way. I enjoy reading this blog for its great writing and the observational skills of the writer. Her blog seems to me to be more about observations on life than it is a blog about bulimia, so don't be scared off from reading it.

Ah, but why, you ask, have I not been writing in my own blog? Depression, confusion, lack of motivation, and a general sense of not knowing any more what I think about the state of the world. I have cut down on my intake of news by a considerable amount, realizing finally that television news sucks big time. And that every news story I read in print has some kind of bias. I knew this before, but lately I'm incredibly discouraged by what I read. Partially by its presentation and partially by its content.

In a world where Pres. Bush continues to have high approval ratings and the Terminator can be elected to govern a large state, where the Medicare drug bill is lauded as good thing (and little is said about all that is wrong with it), where hundreds of children are abused and/or killed every year and yet all our attention is focused on one celebrity accused of abuse and nothing much is said about all the others out there...in a world which seems ever more divided, particularly within this country, and the presidential election looms like a coming juggernaut of farce, where reality television threatens to take over the air waves and reality itself seems, therefore, a bit skewed...in this place and in this time I find myself overwhelmed and at a loss. So I don't know if this will be the end of my blog or not. But hey, at least now we are all caught up on why I haven't been writing here. I think I need to turn back to fiction writing where at least some escape is afforded.

Posted by pam at December 20, 2003 04:54 PM | Comments (1)