I don’t idealize the blog era, but I do miss a few things about it. One is the inherent flexibility of the form. A blog allows for brevity (merciful brevity). When no extra words are needed, there’s no mandate to stretch an idea to fill a slot. On the other hand, if someone needs to say 10,000 words on a . . .
As a child, I wasn’t allowed to watch much television. Books were my main source of entertainment—and a relief and distraction from the conflict around me. I was embarrassed that I didn’t understand my friends’ conversations about the shows they watched, though I tried to pretend I did and I caught glimpses at their houses whenever I could. I often . . .
Next June will mark twenty years since I first blogged, on a Blogspot site, on impulse. That day I figured I’d tire of the blog, that it would quickly become one of my many abandoned writing practices.