Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, a new month begins. Happy New Year, 2008 begins. I haven’t come up with any New Year’s resolutions yet this year, everything seems way too uncertain at this point. I wrote 572 blog posts last year. Some of the NaBloPoMo are talking about trying to write a blog post every day for the whole year. Should I resolve to write at least one blog post every day? Two? Where would vacation fit in? What would happen if I get a job that takes me away from writing. I wrote over 270,000 words in blog entries last year. If I sought to write a novel’s worth of blog posts each month, that would be 600,000 words. That seems excessive.

Beyond that, there is the question of “to what end”? For some reason the old joke about women grousing at a restaurant comes to mind. One complains about the food not being very good, and the other concurs and adds that the servings are too small as well. Do I need to write more? Do I need to write better? Do I need something different?

The old saying insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. Is writing this blog insanity?

Perhaps not. From a NaNoWriMo perspective, there is the aspect of simply writing everyday, the importance of discipline. There is a discipline to my writing, and it has been becoming more disciplined over time. Then, there is the aspect of a favorite word of mine, palimpsest. The words pile up, to provide a palimpsest of a digital social political life. Where it goes, I’m not sure. Will any great insights emerge? I don’t know.

I read the political blogs, I read the technology blogs. I read books I received for Christmas, William Blake, Jean Baudrillard, and Rudy Rucker. How does all of this weave together? I don’t know.

Then, there are the greater questions. What are the parallel processes taking place between my family life, the mailing lists that I’m on, blogging communities that I’m part of, and our nation and the world? Is there some sort of master narrative that can be found? Where do dreams and ideas like Social Dreaming fit in?

Perhaps that is some of the core angst that I face. As I look at 2008, it appears as a blank page, the blank page that terrifies so many writers. There is no clear master narrative at this point. I have no resolutions, other that to persevere, or, as a philosophy professor once suggested, to live each moment more fully and more lovingly than the previous.

Yet perhaps, that is the best that any of us can do.