This is not a blog that is intended to be read.

Presumably you are reading it, which I am grateful for, but if you find anything interesting, amusing or entertaining here, it will be secondary to the main purpose. I pay my bills writing — I’m a journalist by trade — and whatever audience I have for my stories is more than enough to me.

This blog is both an indulgence and a challenge: an indulgence for me to share the thoughts no one asked for on the music, books and other cultural artifacts I am enjoying; a challenge in that I would like to stretch my writing skills a bit outside the pragmatic, three-sentence grafs of the newspaper.

The writers I most enjoy reading are the critics, essayists and reporters of the New Yorker and The Atlantic — Jia Tolentino’s serious engagement with the meaning of passing fads, Ben Taub’s blend of exacting detail and engrossing style, Jennifer Gonnerman’s spare prose that highlight the humanity of her subjects, Carvell Wallace’s ability to portray not only his subjects but their context as well.

These names are representative, not comprehensive; the list of nonfiction writers I admire is lengthy and, perhaps, a subject for another blog. What these writers, named and unnamed, share is not only journalist skill but also style I would like to emulate, or at least understand.

Think of this blog, then, as part soap box, part exercise book. Or better yet, this blog is my panopticon, you the potentially omniscient jailers who, if you exist, might peer into this cell and observe whether or not I am doing anything worth doing. Whether you read this blog or not, the potential that you might will hopefully instill the discipline needed in me to write.

All I ask of you, if you do exist, is your patience with the self-indulgent nature of this project, the inevitable errors that will come from being my own editor, and, if you wish it, your honest thoughts.

A final note — I intend this blog to be largely musing on media and culture, but not reviews, per say. I am far less interested, and far less qualified for, determining the quality of things than I am my own reaction to it.

With those caveats, I hope you enjoy.

If you exist at all.