Something Else

I had meant to post on Quick Study back in September, when a good piece appeared called Desiring Machine. Where did the autumn go? Related to this recent post at ITM, here is a short quote from Quick Study on blogs versus other publishing fora. Scott McLemee observes during the course of his letter to a harsh critic:

A blog is something else. I am not paid to blog. A blog is someplace to let off steam, or jot down a stray thought, or make a recommendation or indulge in a remark or rant. Should a topic interest me enough to write about it in an essay for a magazine or newspaper, then doing so is certainly an option. It involves more time and attention than these blog posts do. But even that is not the decisive distinction. The main thing about the blog is that it's a casual format, and utterly subject to my discretion, not to say whim.

A blog is indeed something else, and that else is what attracted me to the form. I suspect that I've begun to lose sight of else during the two years ITM has breathed air. My new year's blog resolution is to embrace blogdom's casual format better, to embrace the else, and therefore to experiment more with ITM.

And, since we're talking New Year, my colleague Margaret Soltan offers a New Year's Eve rumination over at University Diaries. She takes as her point of departure some lines from Philip Larkin's "Aubade" and offers:

Life is about fighting your way clear to an independent identity and to as much purity of soul as you can sustain under the weight of wrong beginnings and shitty middles.

May In the Middle never become "Shitty Middles." All hail the purity of soul that beckons from the else.