I think that does it! Much more colorful and cozier than before (see my archives, I think they're doomed to wallow in orange and white forever.) This also means that tinkering around with my blog layout is no longer a valid excuse to procrastinate looking for a job. Sigh.

I've added some links at the side that Josh Corey recommended as starting points to delve into the literary blog community. I read the posts and am an outsider to the seemingly private conversations that echo, with the mouse click, between blogs. Poets are the biggest bunch of big-word, big-name droppers I know. I can't read a single poetry blog without having to google every other name, if not every other word. I say this with the effrontery only youth and ignorance can afford. Yes, I'm jealous.

Maybe it's a natural sort of separation anxiety. I started this blog for Josh's creative writing class. I was safely ensconced in a community of other students interested in writing. This blog served the purpose of extending class discussion time to the rest of the week. It also was a place to post thoughts and ideas on nearly anything; a place to practice articulating ideas for others. And in this regard, I find blogging a much more useful tool than a personal notebook which, in my case, is an excuse for bad grammer and all around poor writing.

Do I want to continue using this blog as a notebook of my thoughts on writing and reading? Do I want to blog about my life, and make it closer to my personal journals? Do I want to use it to practice articulating ideas on current events? Do I want to dedicate it to my Do-It-Herself school? Do I want a blog that is a melange of all of the above?

Whatever I eventually decide on, I then need to find a community of bloggers who are interested in the same topic. One of the only useful things I learned from the Catholic church was the importance of community. But community goes both ways, and can be as confining as it can be liberating. The more friends and family I've told about this blog, the more I feel like I need to edit what I say. An appropriate comment on my relationships perhaps? Perhaps if the people who read this blog gave me more feedback . . . left more comments. Ahem. (Yes you.)

A few months ago I wrote that writers are either exhibitionists or recluses, or interestingly, both. Blogging is a part of this bleeding dualism I am, unavoidably, in conversation with.