Sur Le Seuil was the closest me and my Oxford French-English dictionary could come to translate “on the threshold.”  I figured I might as well put all my French classes to use.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….well, maybe not that long ago, I had a blog that was actually taking shape.  For me that means I’d started to have reader I didn’t know.  Well, that and I’d kind of found a mix between professional and personal for the content.  What I’d set up in the old place was semi-pseudonymous. All my friends, family, co-workers and I had psuedonyms, but if you knew me to begin with, or if you’d wanted to do any kind of detailed search, you could figure out who I was and what I was talking about.  The blog, and my pseudonym, were really tied to my graduate school experience, and in an effort to focus on the dissertation, I took it down and made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t start another until the dissertation was done.

Yeah, that didn’t really work.

The dissertation is still not done, but is, in my mind at least, much closer.  Why break such a petty promise to myself?  Well, it’s complicated.  What I learned in my year off from blogging is that as much as maintaining a space like this is a drain on my time, focus, and the limited shelf life of my wrists it is also a space that organizes my thoughts, strengthens my voice, and, most importantly, releases my stress.

Don’t worry it won’t be a space of unmitigated venting.  Often when something has my dander up, and I’m primed to write a snarky little post about it, just thinking about how to psudomize it up helps me to process it enough that I can either let it go, or find the bigger issue to talk about.

What does all of that have to do with the name of this blog?  Maybe not much, but it can help you anticipate the shape this space will develop.  ‘On the Threshold’ carries multiple meanings for me.  It is in a way a reflection of the work I do, and how I think about that work.  It also represents many aspects of my own life.  In a way, I’m on the threshold of having a phd, a career, making the shift from student to professional.  Almost every aspect of my life seems to be on the verge of something, so I figured why not let this space reflect that.