So I’ve wanted to start a blog for some time now, but in the way that I’ve also wanted a puppy for a while as well.  While in theory I imagine that I could be an excellent blog writer or puppy owner, I know enough about myself to suspect that I will eventually drop the ball in one way or another, leaving a half-assed blog or a mangey-looking mutt out there in the aether to fend for itself.

I’ve come up with many good excuses for not starting a blog.  For a long time I felt like I need a blog gimmick so as to avoid being too self-involved.  I didn’t want to be one of those bloggers, the ones who wrote about their baby’s poop or their new soup recipes or their academic work.  A few of my friends had blogs that chronicled something particular, be it their purchases at the farmer’s market or the Rorschach-like shapes of their sweat stains.  I wanted such a motif of my own!  I thought about starting a blog where I would upload the funny or stupid things that my students write and say, but that eventually seemed petty and cruel.  Who, after all, didn’t say or write something stupid in a writing class in college?  All the anxiety about what my blog might end up being paralyzed me from even starting one in the first place.

Part of this anxiety stems from the knowledge that the first entry of any blog will necessarily be overdetermined.  I made the reassuring decision to check out the archived first entries of some of the blogs I’ve read for a long time.  Unsurprisingly, they were terribly anticlimactic.  Nobody, it seems, appears to know how to start one of these things or rationalize why at this point in their life they are doing so. As far as a justification might go for me, I’m an American living in Paris for an indeterminate period of time and this seems worth chronicling, if only for my mother’s sake.  I’m not going to use my name nor those of anyone I know, as it seems would be the prudent choice for anyone who is trying to have some kind of professional career these days.  I hope that all three of you who might decide to read this thing enjoy what I have to say and might be so kind as to give yours truly the heads up if I do indeed start becoming one of those bloggers.

Who knows?  If all goes well, I might just end up getting myself that puppy.