Sit Out A Couple Plays

I really should just write this apology post and link to it everytime since it's always the same reasons, but it's such a classic of the medium.

Earlier I posted about one of the trifold reasons that academic blogs, especially grad student ones, tend to fold. Around October or Novembertide all the academe on these Intertubes seem to slow down a touch, and the midterm crunch certainly isn't uninvolved in this phenomenon. In the ensuing calm before the finals storm however, blogs written by grad students don't seem to spring back the way those written by faculty do. At least in my experience, and I can't imagine I'm totally alone, the flurry of coursework inevitably leads to a crisis of faith.

Blogs tend to spring up when there are more ideas than opportunities for output, i.e. summer and winter breaks. (This blog, for instance, started in summer '06 despite me having parked the domain a whole year earlier!) Actual academic work provides an valve for/demands all that brainsteam. But we're inhabitants of the modern age, right? Not at all, in the halls of ivory towers across the land old media is totally going to waste new media everytime.

As far as I know musically minded bloggers have no shining example along the lines of a Kottke who was able to parlay currency of the Interwebs into success tangible by the old standards. And if we didn't have any faith in the old standards, we probably wouldn't be so worried about doctorates. This doesn't necessarily doom the grad student blogothon, but it requires keeping one's blog in one's heart in the face of crunches and cram time. And that's hard.

P.S. to Phil Ford, now that you're posting again too: In your face!!!!1