Hello, cruel world!

I have been a dedicated blog-lurker and internet procrastinator for years. I have long hid my problem and refused to take any steps to get help or admit my addiction. I have also, despite years of a nagging desire to join the rest of the cool kids in the blogosphere, managed to prevent myself from creating a blog, thinking that what little progress I have made on my dissertation would dwindle to zero and I would eventually end up living out of a cardboard box under the overpass, talking to my imaginary friends about the space aliens. But then, I had the brilliant idea that I could use the blog to prevent rather than aid my procrastination! Suddenly, everything seemed feasible and the space aliens even agreed. So, here I am --- in keeping with my character I am leaping on the blog bandwagon years too late, with the entire blogging fashion passe, as Michael Berube's exit from the blogosphere should make clear. So, while people all around me mill towards the exits I shall struggle my way upstream to spawn ... uh, brilliant internet diatribes. (Tune in regularly for more hashed metaphors!)

I hope one thing I will discover is why I want so much to blog in the first place. Why do I like reading these things? Why do I want to write one of my own? What sorts of little buttons is this pushing in my brain? As part of this investigation, I also have a lot of questions about the blogosphere --- 'scuse me, the academic corner of the blogosphere --- and why it is set up the way it is. This will also be a space for me to consider academia and my place within it. As you can see from my blog title and nom de plume of Sisyphus, I'm suspicious of the place that's been assigned to me and how to survive its machinery.

And a little bit about myself: many people have linked to, and hashed out, the arguments over blogging anon- or pseudonymously. I will post some theories about anonymity and academic blogs later, but the consensus is that blogging can be a drawback for people on the job market, so I'd like my secret superhero identity to stay under wraps. I will say that I am a graduate student in English living on the West Coast of the US. It's my seventh year here. I'm about halfway done with my dissertation, and since I had a fruitless bout with the job market, I guess I'll be sticking around for another year. What will happen next is an open question.