Introspection, from the outside

[pecunium]

I've been doing some reading (yeah, you're all shocked), and this post from Science and Politics got me to thinking about qhat sort of blog I run.

I know that I'm never likely to make it to The Show. I have a LiveJournal and the Cool Kids tend to think that's Pony League. C'est la guerre. I like a bit of notoriety as well as the next guy (more than some, less than others) but I can live without it because; at root, I do this for me.

But I wonder what it looks like to those who read it. Is it political? Life? Food? Philosophy? Photography? An excuse to lecture? Links? Personal revelation? Therapy?

Drop me a line and tell me what you think of when you think of this little corner of the net.

When all is said and done I'll try to sort out what it means to me and let you all in on the secret.

Comments

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

I'd say it's chiefly a political blog from a military point of view, but perhaps not what people might expect from a soldier's blog.

I'd also say that describing it as 'a political blog' is about as accurate as describing Making Light as 'a publishing blog'.

[soldiergrrrl.livejournal.com]

To me, it's kind of like walking around a house from the outside and looking in the windows.

You get an idea of the shape of the house and snippets of the lives led inside it, although you don't quite get the whole picture.

Sometimes, you see things that make you glad you don't live there, and sometimes you see things that make you want to ring the doorbell and ask to come inside.

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

That's a very good analogy. And then after he let me in I'd want him to cook something.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If I let you in, I would.

Then again, as soldiergrrl and I got to eat dinner at a nice tex-mex restaurant in Austin because you told us of it, I guess I'd have to let you in.

TK

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

And I'd chop vegetables and help clean up too.

I'm glad y'all liked Fonda San Miguel. I was wondering how it turned out for you. When we go there, I try to save room for crepas de cajeta: crepes topped with goat-milk dulce de leche.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

Food and personal experience. the fact you're in the army just makes the personal experience more unusual.

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

Everything. I know there are plenty of pundits who will tell you that you have to be single-focus. Well, maybe - but most of the single-focus blogs turn me right off.

And remember: Julia isn't bush league, and she has an LJ.

[lietya.livejournal.com]

A mix of political, personal, and food, is my own impression. Not that there's anything at all wrong with that; the first two are 90% of what I do, too, and I thoroughly enjoy your blog.

"The Show" is a less concrete concept when it comes to blogging. One's importance, and one's influence, can't always be judged by number of readers. The bigger one gets, the closer one gets to becoming "the establishment" - Daily Kos bears a stronger resemblance to the mainstream media, in many ways, than to the average small blogger. That's not a bad thing either, it's just an illustration of the flexibility and variation of the medium.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

I think of somebody who has passionate and well-reasoned opinions, and who has a voice and perspective that I enjoy--and who makes me think.

[red-silk-robe.livejournal.com]

I find this little corner of the net a refreshing breath of air from other little corners of the net (mine, for instance).

It is absent in vapidity. It is articulate, well thought out, the matters that matter to you are substantive rather than trivial.

It makes me think. It teaches me things I don't know. It provides context to sub plots that many 'powers that be' would like us to forget about.

And in all of that, it provides unique glimpses into a complex mind.

I quite like that.

[pindar.livejournal.com]

I'll tell you when I've had the chance to read it, but then I've known you for about 7 years now so the content shouldn't come as any surprise.

Oh, remember that night when we were in the restaurant and you were getting on my nerves so I pulled out the cufflinks with my pips on? Last year I substituted then for a pair of Crowns! I'm opinionated AND I have Field Rank.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I tell people that story.

On the other hand, I'm now a middling NCO, and have been known to tell Majors to piss off, so it isn't as though much is going to change.

TK

[wcg.livejournal.com]

I think of your LJ as mostly serious posts about topical stuff, with a fair amount of food stuff laced in, and the occassional slice of daily life.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I think of it as a memoir of sorts. Daily life, daily thoughts, some dealing with the wider world, some not.

JMHM, "Sisyphus Shrugged", has an LJ in the majors, although not up there with Kos and Atrios.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Julia and I have talked about this... Neither of us thinks we're big leagues. It isn't because we're on LJ, it's that we lack the focus. I look at the big-name bloggers and either I have not the drive (Steve Gilliard), the access (Josh Marshall) or the attitude (Rude Pundit, Digby, Atrios), nor the singleness of topic (Orcinus, though he has more I'd wager the main reason people read him is for his take on the faar right; and the corrosive aspects it brings out in the polity).

And I'm not a collective (Pandagon, Making Light [though they didn't start out as one, and Making Light is somewhat, sui generis in that it came to being just as rassf was dying, and the usual suspects moved to another place to do what they do... which is engage in all sorts of concatative discussion).

It's more as Cluefairy_J, says below, I don't have a product. There are niche areas I read, were there are Names. I'm not doing that.

If I had a blog I wanted to be like it would be making light.

I'm not sure LJ lends itself to that, and I am not inclined to get MT and do all the work which goes into that sort of blog (though I'd like to be able to disemvowel people).

So I do much as I have always done, I muddle along and talk to people.

TK

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

Hopefully with MT owning LJ there will be a lovely new version that combines the best of both worlds (MT/LJ)...that would be cool.

[(Anonymous)]

I wonder what you are thinking about since you left the ASML, and come here to find out.

Susan in St. Paul

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I don't know that I'd have left ASML without an outlet, but I don't know that I'd have been as much as I was had I stayed.

It isn't that I didn't care for the mannnerisms, as much as it was there were (or still are, I can't say) people I couldn't respect, and wouldn't be rude to. Which made speaking my mind difficult.

I think of popping back in, but there is only so much time in the day, and I have food to cook, pictures to take, news to read and things to write.

Sometimes the Army asks for my time as well.

Something had to give.

TK

[jazzfish]

To me it's political, life, and food/photography, in that order. (Philosophy's part of all of the above, as it should be.)

[ckd]

It's political (including the RDA of snark), life, food, and all the rest. It's more interesting to me than a strictly political blog, or a strictly food blog, or the like.

I don't claim that reading your LJ means I "know who you are" in some cosmic sense; at best, I know who you are on LJ. However, I like who you are on LJ. As an Army brat, I recognize a lot of the military life stuff from a different angle; as someone who shares some but not necessarily all of your political views, I enjoy the snark; as someone who doesn't ride, I enjoy the horse tales. It's all good.

[mountain-spirit.livejournal.com]

i'm glad you are on my friends list, looking forward to reading what you have to say.

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

So, first of all, by saying that LiveJournal is an exclusion to making it to The Show you are contributing to that belief and propagating it. I'm sure there are some big name bloggers that use LJ, no? And shoot, if you got a domain name to "hide" the LJ reference, removed the LJ header from this blog and did a little template changes, it wouldn't look much like LJ. Not a valid argument in my mind.

Second, if someone wants to make it to The Show, they have to devote time and energy to it and the desire. I can't imagine that hard work wouldn't pay off. Start commenting on A Lister blogs all over the place, network, do research and post, etc. Find a niche.

Yes, I read the post you linked to and there are considerations and realities with regards to search engines, A Lister cliques, etc. I'm not dismissing those points. I think they're valid.

The thing is, there does have to be a niche/catch to the blog, in my opinion. For example, I used to read Mimi Smartypants. She is hysterical - a comedian. Then she had a baby and I stopped reading. Cause, frankly, I don't care about her kids, didn't have time to read until she posted something funny that wasn't about her kids and I'm not a parent, either, so there's no shared bond there. So, her audience changed and I'm sure that she's still popular, cause she is VERY funny and many people are parents and can identify, yanno? She doesn't write about politics. She writes about life and the weirdness of her own life. But she found a niche/catch and she's a great writer. I liked her comedy act.

I think if someone decides to become an A Lister, they need to create a "Product" and sell it - and I'm not suggesting that it be a one product (theme, talking point, motif) blog, that's not my point.

As for what I think of your blog....I love that we've reconnected our friendship having known you for many, many years In Real Life. I find I read it to find out news and politics that I miss, opinion from someone who is in the military, food, and personal revelation from you. Would I read you if I didn't know you personally? Dunno and unfortunately, can't answer cause that's not what happened.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

It isn't that I think LJ is a place where big league talent lives. I look at jmhm and twistedchick and nikkinewsnet and insomnia and bellatrys and the like, and I know the talent is here.

I also know the people who are in the gatekeeping role think LJ is for angsty teenagers who haven't dried off behind the ears. I get some people who wander in from my posts elsewhere (Making Light, Steve Gilliard, Is That Legal, The Rocky Mountain Collegian {I went and read the riot act to a chickenhawk} Obsidian Wings; before it went to hell, Pandagon, Majikthise...), but in the main I don't see that many people looking at this as real blogging (whatever that means).

My niches, such as it is, is my life. Yeah, I rant about politics, but that's my life. I rant about politics no matter where I am. Maia is probably glad I have a blog, as it means she hears less of it. It isn't that she minds, but I do rant on rather a lot, and sometimes she wants to discuss other things.

Would you have found my LJ without having known me? Probably not. I'd've had to say something someplace you frequent, and then decided to follow it up.

With the exception of my rants on torture, I don't seem to get that many people following the link.

So it's other people talking me up on LJ which gets me readers.

I can live with that.

TK

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

True. Never underestimate word of mouth.

A-List

[libertango.livejournal.com]

This is what I was going to post to him, in reply. Then I got to the bottom of the comment form, and found out the definition of "anonymous" is, "anyone without a Blogger account." Fuck him.

*^*^*^*

"All politics is sexual politics."

I can easily see how this may be true for you. Perhaps even for a large number of people. But my own experience is that human beings are sufficiently diverse that hardly any statement that begins, "All..." turns out to be true.

I am reminded of Kinsey's comment, pre-sexual research, that he hadn't seen enough specimens of wasps to generalize. This after having seen many thousand.

"The real problem are search engines like Google (including blogsearch.google.com), Technorati and Yahoo news. There is no opting out ot those."

This is factually inaccurate. Most search engines pay attention to robot exclusion rules. LiveJournal reduces it to a checkbox on one's profile.

As to the topic of blog-tracking tools generally, they're predominantly crap. (A technical term.) I haven't seen one that isn't opt-in, which means it's all self-reporting anyway. TTLB, for example -- millions of blogs, millions of links, yet the top of the food chain supposedly only get a few thousand? It's ridiculous on the face of it.

The blunt truth is the overwhelming majority of bloggers, at this point, neither know nor care about such tools. The reason they tend to be dominated by first wave-ers is because those are the only people with the near autistic focus needed to use them, and/or are aware of them in the first place.

I suppose this is an argument for the Long Tail writ large. That the difference between an A-List blogger and a Z-List blogger is so small, it's almost a rounding error.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

The food entries make me positively drool.

The political stuff I find to be well-thought-out and reasoned.

DV

[ad-kay.livejournal.com]

I've come to expect eminently sensible and compassionate political commentary, especially when dealing with foreign affairs or the military.

And there's also the food porn. (Although I did have a few disconcerting seconds a few months back when you wrote of your plans to make beef stock and I mistakenly thought it involved lemurs.)

[mactavish.livejournal.com]

Political, food, and personal/experiential. You seem more whole to me than single-focus bloggers, a person rather than a brain connected to a mouth.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Since she said what I was going to say, I'll just go with that.

[zaimoni.livejournal.com]

Superficially, a blend of politics and philosophy.

It goes much further than that.

[enname.livejournal.com]

The political, excellent quality writing and (pleasantly suprised) food. I'll admit that I try to collect political views and perspectives that are well researched and informative, but the food is a great benefit. The less 'driven' style gives me more time to read, think and digest.

[geekchick]

Politics and philosophy, with a healthy dose of foodporn and a dash of the personal. I enjoy reading all of it, and I like that you do include the personal from time to time, for the same sort of reason that mactavish mentioned.

[ladymeow.livejournal.com]

-Political
-Military
-Food
-Personal