A "Rebirth" . . . Again

New beginnings - MO on Mississippi

 I've had this blog since about April of 2004 (7 years? - wow),  and in that time this blog is been many things: a personal blog, an exploration of my academic learning, a political blog, a travel blog, and a social blog . . .  with, of course, many months of inactivity in the between. I started out to be a very strong blogger, but then as life took over, and my time was constrained, my efforts at blogging waned. This is typical, I suspect, for many bloggers - to go through this up-and-down phase with blogging.

Right now, a course I am teaching at South Seattle community college, online communication (CMST275),  require that my students all write and maintain a blog for at least six weeks.  I never like to give an assignment out that I am not prepared to also carryout myself. That is, I don't think it's fair to ask my students to write a certain kind of essay, or paper, that I am not willing to write as well. One of the best forms of teaching, is by example and so I wish to pick up this blog once again, and offer, hopefully, a good example.

But giving a good example, it also means that I need to shift the focus of my blog. As I said my blog is been many things,  and one thing that has bothered me was how unfocused my blog could be at times.  I advised my students to write around a theme, and so I find that I should be doing the same thing.

 So you may have noticed, if you're still a reader, that my title has changed to reflect this new theme. The two main things I'm going to examine are:

•   happiness and how to obtain happiness- this will be from a philosophical and a practical point of view. For example, I might look at how commercials tell us how happiness can be found,  Or it may give an overview of Aristotle's argument regarding happiness and living the good life.

•  The second thing this blog will look at our arguments. Recently, as a little bit of a joke, I put the following phrase on my Facebook page,  encouraging people to fill in the blank:  I am Goddess of . . . 

 these are the answers I got back:

Just lose the of :)
Interesting arguments.
Self improvement, brain stretching, and positivity!! (Or as Kristor noted, Goddess)
Intriguing intellect 
All she surveys 

Besides finding out that my friends are terribly kind, and not nearly as snarky as I thought they were going to be with that question, I was intrigued by how people saw me. And it occurred to me that I actually do spend a great deal of time looking at arguments, and complaining about arguments, and celebrating arguments for being successful. So I decided to go with the interesting arguments, and exploring arguments–a suggestion my husband made.


 Finally, arguments are made about happiness all the time. And so happiness seems to be a fitting subject to examine while I'm examining arguments.

 Regardless, it looks like I'm back in the blogging business. Like my students, I desire to make at least one post a week, around my theme, and I promise to respond to any comments and thoughts that you may have to share with me.


 R