possibly the most difficult aspect of blogging for me is that as nature abhors a vacuum, i abhor a blank page. i can’t call it ‘writer’s block’, as that would expose the conceit that i might be a writer. what i find though, is that i’m just great at writing in response to others. i have wasted untold hundreds of hours of my life posting in blog comments. someone else start the topic – i’ll run with it. so long as the topic has even  marginal interest for me, i can sputter and spew about it til they button up piccadilly. i recently "quit", cold-turkey, a popular blog that i’d been posting comments on for quite a few months. i closed the tab in my browser, and i’ve not been back. i found myself wasting such an enormous amount of time responding there. and to what end? the majority on the blog are classic bay area liberals, and i became ‘the conservative guy’, ‘the bush supporter’, simply because i didn’t profess my undying loathing for the bush-cheney-rice-rove-rumsfeld-wolfowitz-PNAC cabal in every post.

so, i’m a reactionary writer. i write in reaction to others. creating new ’stuff’ on my own is uncommonly difficult.

i’m quite well aware of the question that looms like a wet fart outside the door: so why are you doing it then,  bubba? 

With a bit of reflection, and perhaps more importantly rereading, I’m further amused by my earlier musings. But not happily so. While I claimed ‘conclusions’ in my penultimate happy talk post, I find on rereading there are none. Not a one. Plenty of open-ended analysis, probing, oh my so probing. But analysis without conclusions is like…is like…corn without the cob?

Actually, I suppose there’s plenty of room for open-ended analysis, even ajar analysis. Really, what does it matter? This murky puddle of electrons isn’t going anywhere, nor does it need to. I stake my claim to this mundane hairball of the blogpolitic. I will shout it loud and shout it clear:

I have nothing to say. You have nothing to hear. Move along.

This post exists only for one purpose.

“I think that people who write blogs about blogging are deluded.”

There. I’ve just meta-meta-blogged.

Paul is rather amused at what he’s written so far. I’m living the blogging dream, baby!

Serious tones, analysis, conclusions. Fabulous baby. Just fabulous. I ‘r’ a instapundit. I think. I’m not really sure what an instapundit it. I assume it’s someone who starts a blog and starts prattling on about politics and stuff.

With no credentials. Other than owning a computer, being able to type, and having an internet connection.

Good deal!

Unfortunately, the vastness of the apathetic middle has created a vacuum. When most people simply don’t give a damn, it rather gives those who do give a damn an awfully uncongested ideological highway to travel. Nature abhors a vacuum, and ‘giving a damn’ – good or bad – fills it.

The problem is, ‘giving a damn’ is definitely not a credential. As I took pains to point out - I give a damn, but who the hell am I? I care a lot about some things, don’t give a damn about others. But if I – like ten thousand others – take to the blog as my clarion, I can share my voice with many of the apathetic who have a vague notion that ’something’s going on’ and find the distraction of the commentary interesting.

Not just the blog of course. The airwaves are filled with the ‘give a damn’ folks. And likewise, most really have no credentials either. Their credential is that ‘they care’, but that’s about the extent of it. Selfishness is a primary driving force in Man, rightfully so – "grub first, then ethics" in the wonderful words of Bertolt Brecht.