Mostly Welcome

Since this blog began in mid-October, 2005, I have spent more time not-blogging than actually blogging. Back when I was diligently, daily, imparting something about art, I really loved it. I had a great time with it. I learned. I had fun. Loved, loved, loved the comments.

In the three months that have passed since I bid blogging farewell, I have grown deeply ambivalent, and the rich, velvety dust on Impart Art Daily has ceased to bother me. At first, I collected little reminders of things I should definitely write about after returning to my blogging fun. Slowly, that impulse faded into the nothingness this post seems to be getting at.

My reason for not-blogging was very good. I had a thesis to complete in a very short time. And I did it too. 79 pages of text that, with images and every thing else that goes into a thesis, will eventually top out at over a hundred pages. It will probably be printed and bound and on my bookshelf before Christmas. My blog even came in handy while I was writing. A tiny little post from December really fit into my work and saved me a ton of “go research it and check out the data” time.

Although my reason for not-blogging has long since come to a rather tidy conclusion, my interest in blogging has yet to recover. And in my absence I found that I’ve forgotten a lot of what I’ve already written. Part of me is terrified of rewriting something you’ve read here before. . . .

Another reason for not-blogging has to do with how I have spent the last several months. Put simply (but hopefully not offensively) Impart Art has always been targeted to those who probably don’t know that much about art. Since that includes just about everyone, I was filling a need, and the rudimentary level of it kept the content (I flatter myself) interesting and accessible. For several months, my energy has been devoted to tasks that are neither rudimentary nor broadly applicable. The degree of specificity of thought and writing required by my thesis made my brain ache in ways that Impart Art never had or could. In short, it has been hard to switch gears, and actually, I haven’t yet succeeded.

So, anyway, that’s all just a really big disclaimer. I welcome myself back to blogging, but in the charming Lebanese way that always makes me laugh. So like me, you too are mostly welcome to Impart Art Daily (usually).