Time for a Blog Makeover . . .

This blog is about to change. It used to be my forum (well, one of them . . . ) to figure myself out spiritually and emotionally--to talk about what frustrated, inspired, angered, and entranced me. I enjoyed organizing and presenting my thoughts on life and receiving feedback from friendly readers. It's been good for me; some of what I consider my best writing is on this blog; and though it's been sporadic, it has still catalogued many important experiences and stages in my life.

I'm still figuring myself out, but this online space will instead reflect my process of deciding who I am as a career thinker and instructor. The next two years of my life will be enormously developmental in this regard; I'll be immersing myself in my field as I study for prelims, decide on a dissertation topic, and build a name and a reputation for myself as I publish, present, and otherwise contribute to the world around me. As I push further and further into my career (or is it "farther and farther"?), I'm going to start blogging more about things that factor into that--books, art, teaching, theater, music, and literary criticism.

My personal life, likes, dislikes, momentary enthusiasms and pet peeves, will still make it in here from time to time; I want my work to be integrated with my life, not compartmentalized. No work I produce will be good if it isn't, in some measure, wholistic, engaging me emotionally, spiritually, and physically. At the same time, I feel the need for an informal space for sustained reflection on my reading and writing, and for informal feedback on that reflection.

This is where you come in. Please write back. I don't care if you are a graduate student in English, an undergraduate student in nursing, a happy barista or a career world-traveler, if you like to read Ben Jonson, John Grisham, or Janette Oke, if you'd rather listen to Matchbox 20 than David Bowie, or if you think theater is snore-inducing and/or of the devil. Please tell me your thoughts. They can only challenge, deepen, and help out my own thought processes.