Hot cocoa and a three foot Christmas tree in my parents living room. Not exactly where I expected to enter the blogging universe a second time. Writing a blog is something that spoke to me from the first time I learned what it actually meant. Since the second grade I've dreamed of being an author of something, whether a non-fiction book, short story, poetry anthology, or sci-fi novel. Some form of authorship that would put me on the map as a talented individual with penchant for writing (if indeed it exists).
As a historian in training, writing is the measure productive output that argues for an interpretation of something in the past. Just like advertising convinces consumers about the quality of certain goods and services, historians produce compelling arguments to whoever will listen. Academic prose, however, is often stale and indigestible in great quantities. Eventually, I needed a creative outlet to write about things that had little to do with history.
One day I decided to start a blog, titling it "A Detestable Imposture," coined from a phrase in an eighteenth-century slaveholder's diary. Using Blogger I wrote about the seeming disinterest in national politics that many of my friends and colleagues in Ohio exhibited. How could they be so apathetic? Growing up outside Washington DC this all seemed so strange. I had to let the world know my disgust and possibly even get a crowd of people to follow me. It wouldn't be that hard. After all Micheal Brooks had a blog, so why couldn't I?
Of course I was not disciplined enough to keep up with posting. That was my first and only experience with blogging, back in 2009. Now in the new year of 2012 I've decided its time to revisit the concept of blogging. There is so much I want to say and it will certainly help improve my writing craft. I am in this for the long haul!
