A First Adventure in BlogLand

Well, I’ve been toying with the idea of entering the blogsphere for a while now and have finally decided to take the plunge. I think it was the election that finally pushed me off the fence – I found a lot of deep and useful analysis in the blogs that I read during the lead up to the big day, and I developed some extra respect for the medium through this experience.

I know some other bloggers personally. Some of my inspiration for getting started is that my good friend Sean Carroll is behind the thoughtful, fun and intellectually refreshing Preposterous Universe blog. I originally thought this was something of a waste of his time, especially given the amount of time it takes to post daily. However, I have changed my mind somewhat, and can see that this may be a way to reach out to a wider community about the work we do and also, perhaps, to find a way to link up with others to “make a difference”. I am an academic and, while I love this life and wouldn’t trade it for anything, outside of one's actual work one does find oneself having the same conversations with the same people, complaining about the same problems day after day (no offence to my good friends; I love our conversations, but it is true we don’t achieve much through them). I don’t know if I’ll feel better discussing such things among this wider group, but we’ll see.

I'm tempted to run on a bit longer to introduce myself more properly, but think it might be best to keep this first post short and simple. At this early stage I don’t know how this will turn out. Maybe I won’t have anything interesting to say, and almost certainly I’ll be unable to post daily. This first post is also somewhat terrifying. Does this feeling pass? It is fun to get started though.