I’m not yet sure I like blogging. It’s quicker to post material on a blog than create html pages for my regular website — that facilitates quick reactions to items in the news, spontaneous thoughts, etc. But that’s not exactly what I have in mind. For the few real comments I’ve added so far (about the RNC protests and the AIPAC dual-loyalty issue), I didn’t just dash them off and post them unedited, but I also didn’t edit and re-edit as I normally do for published material. It feels a little risky to post material I haven’t let simmer for a while. I try to be careful about what I write; the blog format, and the implied informality and diary-like quality, make it harder to be careful. What I say is more tentative than usual, more subject to revision perhaps.
I also don’t yet have down all the mechanics of how it’s supposed to work…
Glad to see you blogging. Put up a link to PsyACT if you can. Got any ideas for joint ACTION ?
Hi Scot! Here’s the link to PSYACT, but I don’t know that it will be seen here! I do have it listed on my website, of course, and there are links to that site on each page. But I haven’t yet figured out how to integrate all the different pieces of my burgeoning web existence.
Or even how to get this next part of the discussion — on critical psychology action — into the right spot. I think I’ll create a new entry, in the critical psychology category.
I’m very pleased to discover your blog as well. Regarding your worry that it “feels a little risky to post material I haven’t let simmer for a while”, I know what you mean, but of course that is also an _advantage_ of blogs. Carefully considered isn’t always most interesting or most useful to others. When one writes things that are a little unfinished it may even be easier for others to take the thought further than when one produces carefully polished text that give the impression of being the “last word” on a topic. And if one does write something that seems wrong on retrospect on can always confess to having changed one’s mind in a subsequent post…
Martin, you are right and I will try to loosen up a bit. I do find myself confronting three overlapping issues: are my ideas developed enough to defend, is my writing clear enough to explain what I mean, and do my comments add anything useful to what’s already out there? Often, by the time I mull all this over, whatever it is I was going to write about is no longer current. But I will try to shift into blog mode…