I remember -- years ago -- a student telling me "You should totally have a LiveJournal," and when I did start blogging -- wow, I guess it's been five years now -- that was the site I initially chose. Since then, I've blogged via Blogger, Typepad, and Wordpress -- sometimes with great spurts of commitment and creativity, sometimes going months between entries. I have utilized blogging for political, personal and professional expression. I have used blogging to chronicle some of the most difficult and powerful experiences of my life. But all along I've blogged pseudonymously.

When I published my first blog, I was a graduate student. Blogging was a new and dangerous venue then, frowned upon by many parts of the academic establishment. As such, it seemed safer to be able to write what I had to write, say what I had to say under a pen-name. Alongside the informal writing of the blog, I vigorously committed myself to the more formal publications academia demanded, and so I could do the "vanity search" for my real name (Audrey Vanderford, at the time) and find plenty of references to it and I could keep an eye on the hits and trackbacks generated by my blogging identity. I had outlets for my most carefully crafted essays on anarchism and the avant-garde, and I had outlets for my most half-assed observations on the idiosyncrasies of my fellow bus commuters. And people read me and liked what I had to say.

Time passes, things change, and sometimes the ink dries up. For various reasons neither my pseudonym nor my real name create much buzz nowadays. That seems a bit silly since I have spent so much time crafting the arguments in my academic writing and since I spend so much time crafting arguments in informal (primarily social media) circles.

So here's my attempt to relaunch "me" -- a collection of some of my essays from the past and a laboratory for some of my ideas for tomorrow.