Starting this blog has got me thinking about how disparate parts of my life seem to be– even to me! I have a hard time reconciling my life as an academic in a MA program with my life as a homebody who prefers to be left alone to embroider and read. This rupture is even more problematic when I consider that my academic interests are technology, media representations, and history while my personal interests are living a quiet and peaceful life.

Writing a blog makes me feel like I need to narrate my life a bit, and all good narratives are coherent and unified (more or less). How to explain that an interest in Civil War reenactments is, actually, media studies and no, I don’t think this is at odds with the part of me that makes homemade yogurt and falls asleep at 9 PM.

I’ve lately found myself involved in one way or another with some discussion about what blogging is or could/should be for academics (via RobotFoot, my boyfriend’s blog, and gnovis the journal associated with my program). For me, the blogging project is much more personal than professional and, in that sense, is really a step out of my comfort zone.

Each time (okay, all 4 times) I sit down to post I have to really work on not over-thinking it. I spend so much time living in complex thoughts that I craft, cook, and generally nest as a way to escape that– it is peaceful and delightfuly simple even when patterns or skills are complex.

Eventually, I suppose, I’ll just need to get over thinking that I need to justify the relationship between reproductive rights, graduate school, crafting, and giving up plastic. These things are all me, and that is going to have to be good enough to get them a place here.

So, if it feels a little awkward that’s because I’m a little awkward.