The Gideonse Bible   With the beard? Yeah, you!

I’m sure y’all (that is, all seven of you who still read this blog) have noticed that I don’t update the Bible as often as I once did and never with the same gusto as I once did. There are a number of reasons, which I will list in no particular order:

• Facebook has sucked away many of the brief blurbs that I would normally devoted whole posts to. So, my capsule reviews of books and movies end up in the Movies app for Facebook or on GoodReads, which I access on Facebook. Similarly, the “Posted Items” app on Facebook gets my “Dude! Read this!” stuff, which I used to use the blog for. And I’m loathe to double-post on here and on Facebook. And since 95% of my blog readers are also on Facebook, no one misses out on my witticisms. Except my mom. And my dad.
• Twitter has taken over the one-line blogs I occasionally used to post. But my Twitter feed is in this middle column, so y’all who still come here get all of that stuff. Except that the Twitter feed is also my Facebook status, so most of people just see my Facebook status or see what I’m up to on the actual Twitter site, so they don’t bother coming to the blog. And so on.
• After coming to grad school, I was almost immediately cowed into self-censorship. Academia is awash in stories of bloggers denied jobs and tenure because their blogs were too controversial, too personal, or too stupid. I was told to stop using the word “fuck.” I was subjected to a rant from a professor I mentioned in passing. Students told me they found my blog. So, I stopped writing about anything that would be deemed controversial, personal, or stupid. Well, most of the time.
• I’m so worried about offending or hurting anyone, I never say anything about my personal experience that could somehow offend or hurt anyone. So, my memoir posts are so bland — and sometimes practically dishonest in what I leave out — that they aren’t even remotely satisfying to write. I am relentlessly honest in my normal existence, but in the last couples years, on this blog, I’m a constructed product. Or at least that’s how I feel. I really miss being a professional writer; I was allowed so much more leeway. As an academic, I’m on only allowed to have political and intellectual opinions and experiences. My personal life isn’t allowed to exist. At least, not in public.
• I have so much to do — to read and write and grade and so on — that when I have the energy to write a good, meaty post — like on, say, Andrew Sullivan’s double standards, why I love LA, or how frustrating it is to have to teach semi-literate students at one of the world’s great research universities — I am guilt-ridden and force myself to do the work that I should be doing. Of course, I’m so anxious and OCD and ennui-ful, I don’t get much work done, but I do get a lot of Scrabble played.
• Yeah, and I’m full of ennui. And since I cannot write about my personal experience anymore, I cannot write about my ennui and how full of it I am. As it were.
• When I could blog about everything, and before Facebook sucked away updates of my daily e-experience, I used to blog about whatever came to mind — consumer service idiocy, fun nights out, movies and books and TV shows and music that I love or hate, political outrages or excitements, thought-provoking or thought-killing articles, my academic and intellectual musings, and really awesome videos (often of kitty cats) I find on YouTube or my pals’ sites. Now, I have no focus for the blog. I need to re-focus. So, I’ve created a poll! It’s in the sidebar.