A response to my very smart wife

When I told my wife my plan of putting at least a little bit of content up in this space every day of 2010, she immediately asked if that wasn't in conflict with the argument I made just a few posts ago, that it is folly to produce content for the sake of content, to seek recognition and faux celebrity by turning one's self into a sort of media event. My lady spoke hard truth, and I squirmed a bit.

Then I thought about this remarkable column that I had just read, by Stanley Fish in the Times. It presents a hard look at the paradox of authenticity, which is a problem that gets a lot of timeshare in my head, and it comes to the same conclusion that I do: there is no perfect solution.

Whatever creative outlet I find, if I know that the result will or might one day be seen by any other person, my ego and my interest in self-promotion become inescapably involved in the creative process and the result is a loss of authenticity. The only pure and authentic act of creation would be one performed in secret, then immediately destroyed. And maybe there would be value in that excersize, but it simply wouldn't be as much fun.

Having given this a lot of thought, my conclusion, like Mr. Fish's, is that there is simply no perfect solution. I cannot separate my ego from the act of blogging, so this space will always in some way be a glorified version of me standing in a square shouting "please please please pay attention to me!" On the other hand, I do think that I can find at least one thing to write or share each day that I would find interesting (philosophical metabloggy musing, for example, fascinates me), and so I can at least hope to escape the trap of just making noise for the sake of making noise.