Why Didn't Anybody Tell Me Sooner?

Have you seen this episode of Sex and the City where Carrie discovers that she is the only person around who hasn't been backing up her information? And she is shocked to realize that even though everybody backs up their information, nobody thought to inform her that it needs to be done? That's how I feel about blogging. Until I discovered this activity myself in 2009, nobody ever mentioned it to me. It's like there was some huge conspiracy to keep me from it.

Come to think of it, there was somebody who blogged back in grad school. That blog, however, was the most inane thing you can imagine. The author kept retelling in excruciating detail every new episode of every single TV show she watched (and she watched all of them.) After reading it, I thought that this was what blogging was all about and forgot about it for years to come. (If you always thought grad students at Yale pass their time talking about Derrida and Baudrillard, think again. No, it was all TV shows, wedding planners, fruit bowls, and plasma-screen TV sets pretty much all the time.)

I wish, however, that I knew what fun blogging could be as early as Christmas 2004. That Christmas I came to Montreal for the winter holidays and stayed at my sister's place. My sister had to leave for the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations at her boyfriend's place. Montreal is tons of fun every single day of the year. Except on Christmas. The city more or less goes dead on December 24 and 25. Everything is closed, and if you forgot to buy the groceries, you will be stuck with nothing to eat until the Christmas festivities end. It's dark and cold outside and lonely inside.

Even though I never celebrate Christmas, I felt kind of lonely, stuck there in my sister's apartment with nothing to keep me company but an unfinished final essay on postcolonial geography in the writings of V.S. Naipaul. Canadian television really sucks in comparison with American television. This must be the reason why I have such an influx of Canadian visitors on my blog over Christmas. (Welcome, my fellow Canadians. Even though Canadian television sucks, you still live in the best country in the world.)  In Montreal, choices were so poor on Christmas Eve that I was forced to watch one after another three different film versions of the Christmas Carol, which, incidentally, is one of few works by Dickens that I don't like. (Here in the US there is a marathon of Law and Order: Criminal Intent running on Christmas Eve. Is that great, or what?)

Of course, if I had a blog at that time, I could have passed the time blogging and connecting with readers and other bloggers who don't celebrate Christmas, or haven't been able to celebrate for a variety of reasons. So I'm asking you: why, oh why didn't any one tell me sooner?