Why blog?

I realize that I've been a sporadic blogger.  I promise that I'm not going to begin every blog post in which I haven't posted in over a week with this kind of apology, but I've been trying to figure out why I haven't felt the need to blog on a regular basis.  I was looking at the stats in my archive (right side bar) and in 2008 I was at the height of my blogging life--I was probably blogging at least twice if not 3 or 4 times a week.  And then things tapered off, with last year as the all-time record low of 34 posts--less than a post per week. 

So I have to ask myself--why blog?  Why do I keep this blog--and what do I want to do with it?

I suppose I've been thinking A LOT about blogging because for part of my new book chapter I've been reading a lot of blogs (part of it deals with blogging--not ready to talk in specific details about the book chapter yet, so I think I'll just leave it at that) and I've been remembering back to 2008 when I was blogging on a regular basis and I had this whole community of people leaving comments and probably folks who were lurking and linking back to my blog.  And I met so many amazing people--fellow bloggers like Tenured Radical and Tami from What Tami Said and the folks at Love Isn't Enough.

What was different in 2008?  I was on leave (technically I was on leave from Fall 2007-Spring 2008)  I was beginning my book manuscript (the same one that I'm still working on).  Which makes sense that in 2009 it dropped off as I was in the thick of teaching and writing.  And then BAM, April 2010 I get my cancer diagnosis.  So it, again, makes sense that 2010 and 2011 were not going to be big blogging years for me.

And now I find myself, 5 years from when I started this blog, on another year-long leave from the classroom--this time finishing the book project on racial ambiguity (back then I thought I was writing about passing).  I also find myself missing having a regular community of commenters and being a regular commenter of the blogs that I used to read on a daily basis.

I guess I've also been thinking about this because my friend "D" sent me this link from The Guardian about the need for more minority scholars who blog (click here) and I am, of course, reminded (as the article alludes to) about the whole AWFUL and RACIST blog post that happened on the Chronicle of Higher Ed and Tressie Mc's wonderfully astute and insightful and intelligent analysis and response to it (click here--out of full disclosure I should also say that I'm proud to call Tressie a friend and I knew her back before she was blogging so elegantly and eloquently)

What this all means is that I really hope to be blogging more regularly and to be reading blogs more regularly.  There are some mighty smart folk writing about race--and I want to be part of that community again.  Or perhaps more accurately, I want to be a more active participant in that community.  Here's to good intentions!