After poking around E2 for several months, I've discovered that several people I know and whose opinions I respect make a home here. I decided it was time to try it out myself.
Furthermore, I've been suffering a prolonged stretch of writers block, and as my livelihood requires me to write, well and clearly and often, such blocks are rather devastating. I'm hoping that writing for fun here will inspire me to write for work.
Said work, of course, isn't really 'work' in any respectable sense. I'm a graduate student, and I do all those things that graduate students do: the teaching, the grunt research, the comprehensive exams. My passion for the whole enterprise waxes and wanes with the moon, but I have to face the fact that I'm simply unqualified for any line of work outside the academy.
I find this experiment, of sorts, pretty fascinating. E2 is a mix of the high and low brow, the elite and vulgar. A (moderately regulated) marketplace of ideas. A used-car lot of knowledge, where one is as likely to drive off in a Lexus as they are in a Gremlin. What's not to appreciate about that?