Pilot Season

So, this is normally the time of year when producers, writers and actors are working on pilots for next year's tv lineups. I know this because I am a pop culture cultist, and because I found that this was the first thing that popped into my head when I realized I had to write a first post for this blog, Dispatches from the Real World, or, as I was originally going to call it, My-Way-Of-Making-Up-To-Certain-People-Who-Shall-Remain-Unnamed-Over-The-Whole-Not-Being-On-Facebook-Thing.
I feel like I should write this first post as a manifesto, but I'm feeling surprisingly tired and undramatic, the former of which is normal, the latter of which is not. So I'm sort of at a loss as to what to say.
My goal is simple: instead of having Facebook, like everyone else, I have decided to start this blog as a way to keep up with my friends once I leave Michigan State, which is (hopefully) going to happen at the end of this semester. That way, my Spartan friends can know all about my adventures and thoughts (and can, if they choose to, respond to them), and I can maintain some of the privacy that has always been important to me. I would actually rather use other forms of communication to keep in touch with people, as I am a huge fan of correspondences, which are time-consuming, but, long-term, have always made me feel closer to those people who I otherwise don't see often.
Obviously, I titled the blog "Dispatches From the Real World" because that is where I am probably about to go. (Unless I go to grad school, at which point, I am going to be running up that Ivory Tower, despite my fear of heights.) I'm embarrassed to say that I am actually afraid of what the near future will be like, so maybe writing about bits and pieces will help me. Maybe.
In terms of subject matter, I guess this will mostly be about boring details of my life and thoughts on the various texts I encounter. I'm an English major (hence the impending joblessness), and although I love my major, it's made me more peculiar than I previously was. For example, I analyze everything. I was sitting in a certain cafeteria not too long ago and mentally wrote a short close reading of its columns (if you've seen those columns, and if you're reading this blog, there's a fair chance you have, you know that this is probably insane.) It's hard for me not to look/read/listen to anything without feeling the need to analyze it, however briefly. I'm sure for the less critical of my friends, this can get pretty irritating. It also makes me sound like a negative Nancy, because no matter how most critics try, it's very hard to write a glowing review that is interesting (Unless you're this critic, and can not only write the truth beautifully, but have great taste.) So, mostly, I am forever having thoughts about these things and am not always in the mood for protests from those I share them with, which are so rarely the right sorts of protests, the ones that push back on my critical thought with more critical thought, but the tired "I don't want to consider that something might be sexist/racist/imperfect, etc." argument that always leaves me marveling at how people blind themselves and are never the better for it. So I would like to have space to discuss those thoughts on occasion, and inevitably I will probably end up writing more on this than my personal life because my life is never as interesting to me as the rest of the world, because I'm not interested in using this space to libel/criticize/annihilate someone, and because those things (books, movies, tv shows, music) are always ripe for critical thought. Even Shakespeare gets the occasional reinterpretation. Go ask postcolonial critics.
I suppose, since I am writing this to certain people, I will take "requests", by which I mean I will write on a subject, if you ask politely, as long as it doesn't violate my other goals with writing this blog.
But this is a transitional thing. I'm not even sure if this is going to last, after all, as I have already indicated, we're in pilot season. Think of this blog, for the moment, in pilot mode. I'm going to review at the end of the semester and the end of the summer if this is working (both for me as a writer and for my intended audience. If you qualify in the intended audience category, I would love any feedback, positive or negative, you have about this.)
I'm always amazed at my ability to defy the law of conservation of mass and make something out of nothing. I've managed a manifesto of sorts without even setting down to say anything other than the truth. This bodes well.