It’s almost been a year since my last post.  Is there anything sadder than an abandoned blog?

Well, yes.  But anyway.

I began this blog a year and a half ago to – let’s be honest now – help me find a job.  Well, now I have one, and it’s pretty all-consuming.  The obvious outcome is that I no longer blog regularly, if at all.

Sometimes, I think about how I haven’t blogged in a long time, despite the fact that the URL for my blog is still in the signature of my personal emails.  And I am filled with a certain anxiety about finding something blog-worthy to share with the world.  In those moments, I am not consciously present or in my moment – a part of me splits away into the objectifying rapporteur, wondering how best to represent this moment to the blogosphere and the world.  Peggy Orenstein has inspired me to reflect on this a bit, in her recent NYT Magazine piece on Twitter.

Twitter has been quite effective in getting me to blog, I now realize – though in microscopic form.  I guess I should find and install a twitter feed to supplement my bare blog with tweets.

But something about the brevity of blogs and tweets in and of itself irks me.  Actually, it bothers me tremendously.  I will be the first to admit that my attention span is much shorter than it used to be.  I  never write long letters or emails to friends anymore.  I read whole books rarely – though that is largely a function of, again, the all-consuming j-o-b.

I have been recently in search of a forum in which people of a certain age – Millennials, to be specific – are addressing pressing issues of our time in long form.  I am tired of blogs.  The short form creates an excuse for people not to do their research or to even exercise thoughtfulness.  The need for blogs to be timely and linked into the news cycle distracts the writer and the reader from taking the time to delve into fundamental and important issues I feel are neglected.  Some of these would be how to reverse the habits of thoughtless consumption we have inherited from the Baby Boomer generation; What the mark of our generation will be on the world; How to reverse the scourge that is credit/debt (again inherited from the Boomers); and What it means to be a Millennial, growing up into an adult.

I have not yet found a place for such discussions, or even monologues.  I yearn for a Millennial Manifesto that actually means something – and, god forbid, exhibits correct grammar and spelling (yes, Scott Beale, I’m talking to you).  But short of starting something myself -and I admit, the thought of researching and writing a long article on these subjects is terrifying to me – I seem to be without recourse.

Next week, I am attending the Roosevelt Institution’s Think2040.  I’m looking forward to – aside from being the oldest Millennial in the room – seeing how my generation of thinkers can surpass my expectations, as well as fall short.  I’m also looking forward to getting some good ideas about topics to thresh out in longer form, and maybe some folks who might want to be part of an online forum to discuss, at reasonable length and with a significant deal of thought, what will come to define our generation and the contributions we have made to our country and the world.

Here’s hoping.

And, as for the blog – I am torn.  By my motivations to have a public persona shared with the world and what is required by the very act of sitting down and putting my thoughts into print.  How I am perceived in the world being informed by what I write here also concerns me – an area I want to commit significant time in the blog to is Buddhist practice and philosophy.  But there’s plenty of light stuff I can write about, too, and I’ll be happy to let the blog take on a freer form of bricolage.

After all, I have a job now.  For now.  And the blog’s function is not to show the world I am a serious political organizer people want to hire.  So I’m a little freer today, and so will be my blog.  I guess.