ever since i started blogging again (or: since i came to glasgow), i’ve been doing a lot of exploring of the blogosphere and reading other people’s blogs (besides dooce‘s, i mean), commenting on them, laughing at the hilarious mental images that some other bloggers have such an amazing ability to create. and OH MY GOD. my recent favoritest find? if you love lolcats or loldogs, and you watch ‘house’ (the medical drama starring that beautiful man hugh laurie), then you need to check out j-money‘s blog for lolhouse.
okay, i’ll try to stop with the links. (also, i’m at that point again on thursday evenings where i don’t have much more time to blog because of the thursday night “curry-dinner-then-close-down-the-pub” ritual. because we get back somewhere around 12:30 a.m., i have to finish this post before i leave or i won’t make my daily nablo post.)
mmkay, where was i? oh yes, tons of blogs, and MAN, does it ever make me feel like a shitty writer. i never professed to be a great writer, or anything even remotely resembling one, but reading other people’s blogs is a bit humbling. what’s funny is that i really started a blog in 2004 so that i could document my thoughts about things going on in my life and the world around me. but it seems like what started out as an online diary has now turned into some sort of pressure for me to become more deliberate and eloquent in my blog posts. and if you’ve been reading my blog for any long period of time and have been waiting for that? chances are pretty low that it’s ever going to happen. just lettin’ you know…
but blows-to-the-blog-ego aside, i’ve learned so much about people, places, things, some of them complete strangers, and some of them entirely familiar. one of the things that i’ve been reading a lot about recently is cincinnati. for someone who is a born and raised cincinnatian, it’s been difficult in my 31 years to continue finding anything attractive about my hometown. in fact, over the years i’ve come to resent it, mostly because it seems that, while the people are friendly, there’s some strange “disconnect” that goes on in the cincinnati masses that i can’t quite put my finger on. the city is, as a whole, staunchly republican (evidenced by the indian hill zip code being the fourth largest in donations to the bush re-election campaign), and social progress seems to be practically non-existent. well, that and the summers are just WAY TOO HUMID. bleh.
in watching the election results come in, and seeing hamilton county go blue, as well as the entire state of ohio, rendered me awestruck and speechless. for the first time, i felt like i had some sort of kinship with my hometown, that perhaps, there were more like-minded people there than i originally thought.
and in some of the cincinnati blogs that i’ve been reading (which i DO promise to put on my blogroll at a later date), have in a way, rekindled a small amount of interest in the city. perhaps it’s a combination of obama’s election and reading new blogs which reveal all of the many cool and interesting things about the city (because they do exist!), but i have more hope for the future of my country, and my city than i have in a long time.
