Justification

I always claimed I'd never keep a blog. The whole exercise seemed so self-centered: you expose your personal, "private" subjectivity to an audience that exists to gratify your desire to be a public figure, even if only anonymously. But (of course there had to be a "but") now I see the exercise differently; I understand the meaning of "self-centered" differently. That's because my dad passed away two weeks ago, at the ripe young age of 58. Now my subjectivity is not completely my own. Now my desire to air my private life publicly is a desire to keep my father's memory and spirit alive through myself. I don't deny that this exercise, too, is self-centered. I merely define the "self" differently than I did two weeks ago.

It remains to be seen how this will work out in practice. In the meantime, you'll forgive me for the conceit of assuming that everything I post is, however indirectly, an expression of what my dad taught me.

And what he continues to teach me, even as I struggle to figure things out on my own.