What’s in a Domain?

Dear Reader,

Today is the first day of this blog.  I avoided writing a blog for a long time because, to me, blogging is the ultimate form of navel-gazing, and somehow it seems like an embarrassing exercise.  “Look at me!  I have things to say!” But then I realized a few things.  One: There are too many blogs to read already, so not too many people will read this, right?  I mean, I hope some people will read it, but if not, that’s okay.  How embarrassing can it be?  Two: I realized that my wife was right: I should write things down more so I don’t lose them (she has been trying to persuade me to write a blog for years).  I admit that I occasionally have interesting thoughts.  Three: Over the past five years as I have been pursuing my doctoral degree, I have not written much that I would call “fun” – at least not really fun. I would like writing to feel fun again.

The last thing I realized – and this is the point of this post – is that it is kind of hard to set up a blog. Choosing a name is really difficult.  All good domain names have been claimed, even if no one is using them. My first choice was “First Fridays” – the last time I was in a real writing group, we met every first Friday night of the month.  We called it “Journal Club,” and it was my favorite day of each month.  But that name was taken.  As a sports fan, I also thought “Friday Night Writes” was kind of a clever play on the football jargon – that was also taken.  Luckily, I was able to claim “Friday Nite Writes” as an alternative.  It’s an homage to what I hope this blog will be: something that I write once a month and post on the first Friday night – just like Journal Club when writing was fun.

I like to think I’m kind of a Renaissance Girl – I have a lot of interests from politics to literature to sports to philosophy to popular culture.  So I will write about whatever.  And you will read it.  Or you won’t.  No big deal.  I’ll “see” you on the first Friday of April.