Introduction - To blog or not to blog

This is my first attempt at blogging. I'm sure there will be breaches of etiquette and technical difficulties as I learn, but hey, I managed to set up my DSL connection today. I've never had DSL before. As a grad student in a research program, I am surrounded by lots of geeky men. So there is almost invariably a guy around who is not only available but pretty much chronically willing to offer "help" with various computer related conundrums. Sometimes the help is in fact helpful. I consider it peer learning, and if any of them gets to be too much of a dick, I confront. Hence, it's a win-win situation. I get to remedy my femininely conditioned computer/tech deficiencies (which are minimal compared to the population at large I think) and they get to learn how NOT to be sexist fucks.

Since my (old) hard drive just went down in flames last week, I found myself having to rely overly much on the kind intentions of these menfolk to get my computer back up and running, so I decided that although there were offers to help with the internet I would most certainly NOT entertain them this time. I'm smart and resourceful, regardless of being shamefully somewhat ignorant about my own computer. I was determined to do this on my own. And I did. Now I'm feeling all proud and competent and I decided if I can get the DSL up and going, I can do a blog.

I am self conscious about this choice though. After a good deal of consideration, I decided blogging is no worse than breeding and inflicting your children on people in restaurants, busses, and other confined and necessary public areas. One caveat here: I do not disapprove of all breeding or child rearing. I think some people make just fine parents and I am very happy they are creating people who will be raised in safe and supportive homes, contribute to the overall joy and progress of society, and hopefully grow up to be responsible, considerate, socially aware adults. Then there are the rest of them, and I do believe they make up the at least visible majority. They don't ask themselves if they should perhaps not have those kids. Nope. They just have 'em, and then you and I are stuck with them.

While I am sure that the people who indiscriminantly breed do not ask themselves if the world really wants or needs their offspring before they go making the babies, I do find myself wondering if the world really needs another jaded blogger. I decided that since the legacy drive is an apparently legitimate (although seemingly post hoc) excuse for populating the supermarket isles with stranded verbally challenged 8 year olds, my channeling this drive into a blog is not something I should allow self consciousness to arrest.

But why now? Because I have had a couple of the most unbelievably shitty weeks of my life and I thought I'd report back to the universe about it. It seems like someone should be taking notes: "Subject responded to shelves collapsing on her monitor and barely missing her head by staring blankly at closet doors for about 2 minutes".

It's not been life or death shitty, but a stream of unrelenting and unexpected shit. What is this mythic shit I speak of, you ask. It lately seems that when things go bad, they transcend bad, rotten, shitty, and even just plain fucked. After an ill conceived marriage with inevitable divorce, 7 quite likely wasted years in grad school, a horrid relationship with my former academic advisor, battles with various nasty illnesses (1, 2), finding and now perhaps losing the love of my life, I guess it makes sense that these days when things go bad, they go marvelously bad. They go absurd.

I decided that if I were 22 again, I might want to know where the steps I was just starting to take on this path would lead. Of course I recognize that this journey is not complete. Hell, I'm only 33. But I've reached a place on the road where I am going to stop for a while, look around, take in the view. Really, I have no choice. I am in the tea room.