How I Learned To Blog

I think I'm understanding why exiled populations always produce such a paper trail of their thoughts, musings, commentaries...

You have a lot of time in exile. A lot.

Runs in my family.

Grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles -- exiled from a small Central European republic. Nothing quite as dramatic for me. I'm exiled from my one-bedroom 600-ish square foot apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan because it doubles as a workplace for my partner. By day the place is our home.. come the afternoon, and many an evening, it transforms into "an oasis in the middle of Manhattan", as one visitor called it.

Anyhow, this forces me onto the streets of our neighborhood. And when I'm not trying to use that time for productive things, like finding work, auditioning, grocery shopping - I have time to sit in a Starbucks (if there's a free table - people in NY spend a LOT of time in Starbucks...), or Barnes & Noble, or somewhere else in the universe of free or almost-free public "living rooms" in this city. And that's where I think.. a lot... about writing a blog, among other things.

I doubt if Solzhenitsyn had it this good - a maple streusel muffin, a hot cup of tea, a refuge from the cold outside (though a crowded sanctuary, to be sure, what with the constant parade of refugees lining up to get their lattes while they dodge the powercables strewn about the floor).

But here we go. First attempt. I feel a real pressure to be profound. Probably won't happen. I hear blogging can become obsessive - but I probably will obsess too much about what I'm writing, not how often or who reads it. Read on - next entry.