Baby and the Blog

Babies are a blog's worst enemy. Blogging is already an activity one does with procrastinatory shame, but when time gets pinched by a screaming hungry infant, it's the last thing to fit in an impoverished schedule. Since my daughter was born (October 19, 2008), I've been hardly able to keep up with the day-to-day tasks of teaching and scholarly responsibilities. So, my blog's productivity has floundered. Little Popi, the new blog where my wife and I post baby updates, serves an entirely different role than Objects-Building-Situations. It's more like a family log and photo album intended for relatives and friends who live far away and can only witness the child's development through the web. 

Caring for an infant offers lots and lots of busy time while holding her, rocking her, feeding her, cleaning her, burping her. During these long moments, the mind cooks up a whole slew of new blogging ideas that, ultimately, get delayed by the next chore and then are superseded by the next great idea, which--like the last one--never touches the keyboard. Sometimes, I feel like a breast-feeding mom, full of blog-milk. To have brainstorming excess but writing constrictions is frustrating.  And then, Arianna (Stassinopoulos) Huffington showed up on the Daily Show to promote The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging (New York, 2008) published just three days ago. In her distinctively Greek accent, she advised viewers: "blog your obvious passions and your secret passions," a great nugget of insight. I find this holds with many of my favorite blogs, which I read because they come from a position of authority and knowledge (with passion), but then digress into riskier less confident fields. For example, I started blogging about my obvious academic passion for architecture and archaeology but ended up exploring stranger avenues on punk and aesthetics. 

After a baby-induced respite from this odd practice, I feel I need to adjust my blogging habits. For one, I must stop belaboring over my postings and make them snappier. Blogging should be done quickly, like an open email to a friend. Even if only for a few minutes a day, I feel that frequent postings are mandatory. Otherwise, potential readers cannot themselves establish reading regularity. So I hope to start a different style of posting that is perhaps more in-tune with the spirit of blogging. Regularity and brevity will hopefully get me out of my parental rut. Stay tuned.