learning to write again

I've been thinking for a long time that I needed to get back into blogging. I finally decided on a whim to create one about three minutes ago as I was sitting on a futon listening to the wind bluster outside.

This blog isn't going to have a specific theme unless it spontaneously develops one of its own accord. I plan on using this as a repository of whatever I'm thinking about at the time. By and large that will include beer reviews, thoughts on getting out of graduate school and academics (I've been working on a Ph.D. in Medieval English for what feels like a far too significant portion of my life and am very, very burnt out), thoughts on writing, books, perfume reviews, cooking, knitting, vampires, films and cheesy television. I'm sure there will also be the occasional livejournal-style introspective whining, because a) everyone needs to at some point and b) I've been in something of an existential crisis for a while (see grad school: burn out).

I've titled this post "learning to write again" because I feel like 6+ years in grad school has nearly destroyed my style and my voice. Ultimately, I think that's what I'm trying to recover here. I don't particularly want to sound like a jargon-heavy pompous twit. I really don't think most academics sound like jargon-heavy pompous twits, but it does seem to me like several of the more famous ones do (at least in the humanities); I can say that jargon-heavy twitwriting has been by and large what I've been encouraged to do for a long time.

Nunkin is one of my cats. I'm stealing her name for this endeavor, but I don't think she'll mind.