The Future of the Blog

As I am about to begin working on my PhD in Education at Stanford University, I have been reflecting on this blog and the role it will play in my studies. While I was an MA student I wrote here frequently, and I expect I'll continue to write frequently as a PhD student. I feel, however, that I put an undue amount of pressure on myself to produce content for this blog at a fairly regular rate. Undue because, ultimately, I have a very small readership (though I very much appreciate those of you who do read the blog regularly), and thus mostly am writing for myself.

The upshot of all of this reflection is that, while I'm not planning on discontinuing the blog by any stretch, I'm planning on scaling it back significantly. Instead of my target of two posts a week, I'm hoping to get to a post every now and again... Maybe one every couple of weeks. I'm still going to work on my Beethoven project, of course, as time and willpower permit, and likewise with my still nascent novel (which has been more difficult than I anticipated), and I fully anticipate occasional game ravings, political rants, and educational reflections to make their way to this space. But the pace at which I've tried to write here over the past couple of years will be lessened because, well, there's just too much else to do.

In particular, there's too much else to read. Not only will I be taking on a heavy PhD reading load, but I've found that the Internet is bustling with great writing, and the decision to be an active producer of writing sometimes gets in the way of my desire to read more. With that in mind, I want to encourage my readers to take a look at Dirk Hayhurst, at Eric Nusbaum, at Joe Posnanski. These are writers who I follow (or have recently begun to follow) and who are teaching me - whether they intend to or not - to write better.

Perhaps what I'm trying to say is this. As an undergraduate I read a lot and wrote a little. Since then, I've written a lot and read not as much. Now I think it's time for the pendulum to swing back in the other direction, and a few years from now I'll pick up the pen (or the keyboard) and become a writer again. Of course, that's not really a dichotomy - one may write and read a lot at the same time - but I nevertheless feel that one's focus naturally tends towards one or the other at any given time. For now, it's back to being a reader and a student.