Another bit of blogging angst

Would Marx have been a blogger? From the article Time for the last post by Trevor Butterworth at FT.com about blogging:

As for Marx, journalism was an act of economic necessity that, initially, necessitated Engels doing all the writing. But Marx was a quick learner with a deft wit, and in his brisk biography, Francis Wheen posits that “had he but world enough and time Marx could have. made his name as the sharpest polemical journalist of the 19th century. But at his back he could always hear the nagging voice of conscience whispering, ‘c’est magnifique, mais c’est ne pas la guerre.” For Marx and Engels, journalism was trivial - an impediment to serious, memorable and above all influential work. “Mere potboiling,” wrote Engels of the more than 500 articles he and Marx wrote for The New York Daily Tribune, “It doesn’t matter if they are never read again.”

Unless Marx was paid for it, it is highly unlikely he would have been a blogger. He would not have needed it for any other reason.

I have needed this blog many more days than this blog has needed me. The days when I needed it were the frustrating days of sitting alone in front of blank pieces of paper that seemed like they would never be filled with words--not even ugly words.

I am going through a fit of blogging angst. The news cycle is all against the Bush administration, so that makes politics much less fun to write about. My thoughts each day are absorbed in a story I can't talk about in public for fear of losing it. I don't have much hope the world will be a better place to live by the time I die. The eventual destruction of the world possesses a logic of its own that I cannot fathom. Overcoming inertia becomes more difficult each day. The only bright spot of each day is predicting the outcome of sporting events.

Yet I can still cut a deal with myself to be happy if by nothing else than grand forgetting.

Here I am all the same--writing my blog. I need this blog more today than it needs me.