I am two

Today is the second anniversary of Soliloquy so happy birthday to me. Cake and ice cream for everyone! It is time, I feel, for reviewing and evaluating this blog's existence. It's my party so I can do it if I want.

I was introduced to blogging by Belgian Waffle. I enjoyed reading her blog and many of those on her blogroll. Within a short time, Waffle's nefarious intentions were revealed when she began hounding me mercilessly to start my own blog. My excuses fell on deaf ears and so, despite my extremely humble, private nature, I decided to stick it all out for the public to see.

My genre, I decided, would be to describe life inside a monastery with wry, gentle cynicism. I soon discovered, however, that I am not a good at cynicism. Although I found ample material in one particular brother (Brother Porcinus), I generally like life in the monastery too much to poke fun at it. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I was in a leadership position. Perhaps it was due to maturity (which is known to ruin many of the best things in life). Maybe I was afraid of being discovered by the brothers (one of them did find the blog and identify me as the author so I quickly had to take it down and move it to a new address). Since giving up on cynicism (well, most of the time), I feel that I have never found that something that would define my style. This is still a blog in search of a genre.

Despite my extreme humility (I am the humblest person I know), I was not above placing a counter on my blog and checking the results monthly. Alright, weekly. Only occasionally daily. Results have been underwhelming—about 6,800 hits in two years. This should not be surprising since I am averaging less than one post a week. Still I wonder, what is the point of writing if not for the sake of popularity? I despair of ever reaching the heights of blog writing exhibited by Waffle, Heidi, Moobs or Claudia. While I suspect writing may be slightly therapeutic for me, there are probably better and less painful therapies. Lately, blog writing has become a way of disciplining myself.

So what does the future hold for Soliloquy? Will it continue? Probably so, at least for the near future. I have a few more ideas to put out into cyberspace, and there is still hope that one day I will discover the real purpose of this blog.