Monday, January 12, 2009

Welcome to My $100 Tennis Racket

OK, it's my main New Year's resolution to resurrected this blog (again), and keep it alive this time. To that end, I'm revisiting a little mind trick I played on myself when I was much younger.

As a college student, I took up tennis... but with one thing and another, I found I was rarely making time to actually play. I didn't want to give up — not only did I enjoy the game, but I needed the exercise it provided — but willpower alone didn't seem to be driving me to the court. So I bribed myself: I went out and purchased a $100 racket (at a time when that was a huge sum for me), knowing that I wouldn't be able to ignore that level of (to lean on an overworked phrase) skin in the game.

And it worked, at least for a while: For several years (and through a couple additional, better rackets), I continued to play tennis.

So recently, I've announced to my Facebook friends, and to the commenter community at Pharyngula, that I'm back in business. Of course, unlike with the tennis racket, it doesn't cost me any money to invite people here to read my plastic dimestore pearls of wisdom, but it will cost me a nontrivial portion of my self-respect if I fail to hold up my end of the bargain.

So maybe this time I'm blackmailing myself instead of bribing. Either way, welcome, one and all. I don't promise to post several times a day like the big-deal bloggers (I do have a day job, after all), but I'm going to shoot for 4 to 5 updates per week, and we'll see how it goes from there. In the coming days, I'm going to review and update my links, and see what else I can do to dress the place up.

Enjoy!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay, Bill - I'm just writing to let you know that I'm going to do my best to swing by here every now and then and see if you're keeping your word. Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

So will I. I (generally) agree with so much you say over at PZ's, and you write so well, that I bookmarked your blog at the time you announced your intent.