Monday September 07, 2009

Happy New Year

The Tuesday after Labor Day is New Year’s Day in New York. Half-empty subway cars fill back up with tanned, disappointed commuters, and long-unanswered emails miraculously yield enthusiastic (if brief) replies. It is a new beginning. Time to take short stories that have timed out—neither accepted or rejected—at one set of print journals and send them to other journals, where they will, in all likelihood, reach the same non-conclusion. (New year or not, print’s coming demise has done little to speed the operation of literary magazines, which instead seem to pride themselves—like “slow food” restaurants—on providing terrible service.) And it is time also, I’m thinking, to start blogging again.

I don’t know how long it’s been since I blogged regularly—a while—but I know that I’ve developed a bad case of what I will call “blog shyness.” I used to get “phone shyness” when I was reporter in Memphis (when reporters used phones), and it was pretty uncomfortable—watching a deadline roll toward you and feeling helpless to pick up the phone and get the quotes. It was like a bad dream. I haven’t decided what, exactly, I will blog about. I have some ideas for topics, and some ideas for sprucing up the site. That will all come. I just know that now that I’ve been working full-time, I’ve been itchy for an outlet for stray ideas that I’m no longer under pressure to sell, which is what blogs used to be about before they all got optimized and SEO’d within an inch of their lives. (My pledge: I will never make you click through to the rest of a post unless that post is very, very long.)

Nevertheless, one of the most uncomfortable moments in life is that moment—at a party or a wedding, especially—where you walk onto the dance floor and begin to dance. It feels ridiculous—the moment right before you start—and you hope no one is looking. So if you could all just look away for one second, that would be great, because that moment is coming up.