Why so personal?

I had a conversation today with David Brown, who's writing an article about geoblogging for the AAPG Explorer. He asked one question that I really didn't know how to answer: why is my blogging so personal?

I've been thinking about it for the rest of the day, and I think there are a couple answers. The first goes back to the reasons why I blog. Geologists, like other scientists, do their professional communicating using strict (but often unwritten) rules. Scientific writing is impersonal, for good reason: the point is to talk about the observations, the models, the reasons why one explanation is better than the other. The ideas should hold up under examination by many other people. And a scientist should be able to step back from her own pet hypothesis and conclude that she was wrong, if that's what the evidence says. Good science should be free of ego and bias.

But that's an almost inhuman ideal. And, well, it may be a useful process, but it's not what makes me keep working in this field. I do geology because it's beautiful. I love being outside, scrambling through brush, and then looking up and seeing the mountain across the valley, or the potholes in a streambed, and feeling as though the breath has just been knocked out of me. I'm fascinated by the stories hidden in the textures of metamorphic rocks. I like to spin the stage on a petrographic microscope and watch the pretty colors. (Come on. I can't be the only person who does this.) I like the twisted shapes of multiple crenulations seen in thin section, and the smoothness of slickenlines on a fault plane. And I like being confused: walking up to an outcrop and wondering what on earth could have made it like that, and does it really make sense given what everyone else has said about it.

Those aren't the kinds of things that go into a scientific paper. They keep me going through the research, but when the time comes to write a grant proposal or a journal article, I have to put them aside.

Five years ago, I had just been admitted to the hospital to have my son. I was luckier than most women in science: I had accumulated a great deal of experience before my mid-30's, enough so that I got tenure while on maternity leave. If I hadn't, having a baby would have knocked me out of science.* I'm not as strong and determined and efficient as most of the women-in-science bloggers. I slacked off, let the fieldwork slide, didn't publish. Now, I'm working my way back. But I can't do it by simply sitting down and writing an impersonal article. I need to be driven by the sense of wonder, as well.

I started blogging as an outlet for that part of me: the part that finds geology beautiful.

And there's another thing. Being a geologist means that I have an intense sense of place. I'm not from around here, but I live here, and do research here. So I blog about plants, rivers, ice crystals, and whatever else I see, because blogging helps me pay attention to where I am.

(Of course, I may write very personal-sounding posts simply because I'm not a good journalist, and I can't think up universal hooks. So I'm left telling personal stories. Perhaps.)

* You know, it struck me that this could be used as fodder for all those people who think that women shouldn't be hired as doctors or scientists or whatever, because they'll just go and have babies and stop being productive. So, a little more detail about my situation five years ago: I was denied tenure at my first job, in December of 1999. It was like getting dumped, after trying for seven years to become the person that my old school expected me to be. So I was a bit commitment-shy in the first years of my new job: I didn't want to become too attached to the place before I knew that it wouldn't dump me, as well. That meant that I decided I wouldn't start a new research project in a new field area until after I had tenure. And by that time, I had a baby. So, here I am.

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