Might as well get it out of my system
Estimated Days Until Blogger Burnout: 5


Now that my readership has more than doubled over the last few days, I feel obligated to continue. And I'm resigned to the fact that the frequency of postings will continue at this pace for the foreseeable future. Part of it is frustrated-writer-itis and the other part is too-much-time-on-my-hands-anoma. The downside is that too much posting will inevitably hasten my looming burnout, but there's nothing for it. Here we go.

It's been brought to my attention that this blog falls into a "category". Naturally, this makes me uncomfortable as I prefer to be dark, mysterious and uncatergorizable. That last one probably isn't a word, I know, but I think it conveys the right meaning (which is, evidently, what words are supposed to do anyway).

I don't want this to be all about "what blogs are like" and such, but you're just going to have to bear with me as I sort this new thing out. After a while, I promise I will settle into long, droning personal stories told from a point of view and a context that no one outside of my immediate family could possible comprehend. It'll be good times.

But for now...

In analyzing my blog-viewing habits, I find that I am mostly attracted to reading the blogs of college-age people. This is mostly because a) there is no subset of human beings more boring than high schoolers (myself included, at the time) and b) college people tend to be smart.

This last observation seems rather obvious, but I don't mean that in the elitist way it might be taken. In fact, I have a theory about intelligence and I will use myself as an example.

The theory is that, while native intelligence is important, really we're only as smart as the people we surround ourselves with. To wit--

High school: stay low, don't get noticed, escape alive = stupid me.

College: say something smart to other smart people, get better grades than your friends in your major = smart me.

Grad school: don't get run over by the Intellectual Steamroller = me at near genius level.

Now: Six years after grad school, my MA on the wall while I stay home raising my kids. No conversations with anyone over 3'6" for the last 5+ years (except my wife, but we almost exclusively talk about the kids) = me gibbering idiot. I sweart to God I don't understand any of the papers I wrote in graduate school, let alone the books I was reading. I'm almost positive I'd get more out of a Foucault book by eating it than reading it at this point.

Of course my wife works for an semiconductor company doing complicated electrical engineering and programming work surrounded by similarly engaged people, so she has to speak very slowly to me. The trade off (I hope) is that my kids will turn out better than they would have with day care, but then I think "Well, at least there they would have learned Spanish."

So look out, college bloggers, I'm coming for you and your supple young minds. I think at 30 there's still hope for me, however slim.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.3 (hovering steadily)


Pops

- posted by Pops @ 10:29 PM