Metablog
2008
May
12
Blogging about blogging…
I started this blog two years ago as a way to maintain my interest in and expand my knowledge of urban matters after graduating from college with a degree in urban planning and geography. I wrote my first post about immigration – a topic that I remain very passionate about. I intended to write book reviews, research good urbanists, and catalog noteworthy urban initiatives. I aspired to be Geoff Manaugh.
About a year ago, I became disillusioned with urban planning and decided to go back to college for a second degree – in computer science. That ended up not working out and I still don’t know what I want to do “when I grow up” – but I have attempted to maintain my blog despite my faltering passion for urban planning. I tried writing more personal posts for a while and noticed more readers visiting my blog – some even leaving comments – but instead of feeling flattered, I became nervous. I felt pressured to write something meaningful every day.
When I was younger, I started several journals and diaries with the expectation that I would write masterpieces and treasure them forever. However, I would ultimately reread what I wrote a few weeks later, rip out the embarrassing pages, and cry at my inability to attain perfection. I haven’t changed much because I found myself stressing over the quality and importance of my blog posts as well. A few months ago, I made all personal posts private and then, a few weeks later in a fit of low self-esteem, went so far as to delete them along with the wonderful comments that readers left. I now regret this.
I preserved all of my urban planning-related posts because I want to want to write more like them. I want to articulate my hope for the future of suburbs as I seem to be in the minority advocating them. I have also begun writing more personal posts again. I realize that even though I don’t have children or even many friends, I do do a lot of cool things worth writing about – at the very least, I will have a record of what the hell I did with my time before I have kids. So I apologize in advance if write multiple posts about playing World of Warcraft and watching Stargate for ten hours every Saturday. It’s what I do.
I might also post a lot of pictures of my cats.
As I resume blogging, I am unsure how to categorize my posts. I created a “Daily” category for random personal posts, but I also like to write urban planning related posts that reference personal experiences. Should I group all of my old urban planning posts into a single category and be more descriptive about personal posts from now on? I tried categorizing my old posts because there aren’t too many of them, but I still couldn’t figure out what to call the categories for some of them and those are still “Uncategorized”. This troubles me. The process of categorizing posts seems so subjective that I am tempted to not use them at all. But then what would fill the space in my sidebar?
