It's a funny thing, this blogging business. You post stuff, and miraculously enough, people read it.

There are several ways to approach this enterprise. One can blog because one has something to say about a subject under-served elsewhere; that's why Rock Hackshaw writes, I suppose. There aren't many ways to know as much about black politics in Brooklyn as whichever paths have led him to his mastery of the subject. What I know about black politics, and I know more than the average white boy is interested in knowing, I learned from Rock and Chris Owens.

Then, there are those who write because they enjoy the medium itself, the texture and feeling of posting what would otherwise be one's private thoughts to the world at large. That's in large measure what Liza does. She's one of the pioneers of the medium, after all. I'll add another observation: if you want to know what shape this medium is going to take in the near future, you can do worse than cribbing from the Blatinosphere, because they're leading the way in technology, always have. It's not all about opinionated white boys on the bleeding edge, quite the contrary.

Then, there are the activists, people such as myself. I do this because I think it's important to have a place where you can come to read about Progressive politics in a way that relates to where you are where and how you live. This because, frankly, for such a blue state, New York is astonishingly lame in terms of leading the way on Progressive values and initiatives in our government. There are many reasons for this, chief among the complacency that sets in when you win elections in some parts of the state, without much effort, by astonishing margins. This complacency, I'd argue, the laziness that comes from winning without deserving a win or having articulated why you should win, is why the heavily Democratic parts of this state have such abysmal voter turnout ratios, and why there is a grinding sense of powerlessness in so many communities. It's really no wonder that New York is the most dysfunctional state in the union, is it? Here's a hint: the race of two unknowns against Sheldon Silver, one of the most powerful men in this state's history, is going to be decided by roughly as many voters as fit in a rush hour subway train. Isn't that at least slightly embarrassing, for everyone who's a citizen of this state? Isn't it cause for reflection that a former Senate minority leader finds himself in a heavily contested primary against a twenty-eight year old, brilliant as the latter may be? What does that say about our political system? How badly are we served by our representatives for that to happen?

So I'd like to see much change. What I don't care about is taking center stage myself. I don't matter. I am not a very interesting or complex person. I refuse, as a matter of course, every on-the-record interview request, and have done so for years. If you agree with me on stuff, I'm happy, if you don't, I by and large don't care, except in very rare instances. I'm not at the center of national controversies - I'd be horrified if I were - and the work I do, I do in the background. If you think what I write is relevant, that's awesome. If you don't, that's fine, too.

And while I occasionally find myself embroiled in controversies, that's all really quite immaterial. Like I said, if someone disagrees with me on stuff, and I have found to my regret that this happens quite regularly, that's fine, because honestly, I don't care that much. Even writing this is disagreeable to some extent, because I abhor even minor psycho-dramas. There's some pretty real stuff happening in the world, obviously, and while there are people, especially in this medium, who go online for their daily drama fix, I'm not one of them.

So why the extended navel-gazing and manifestly self-contradicting soliloquy? That's a good question, and I'm not sure what the answer is.