... if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men's lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me.That's Thoreau killing them with an under-appreciated truth. It occurs to me that this blog has become something of a continuation of my memoir. I didn't expect this. But always I go back to that Fred Douglass quote--A man is worked on by what he works on. I labored at the book for some time, and it changed me. I can't go back.
And so it also occurs to me that newcomers to this blog, like a passerby entering a conversation midstream, may miss some things. In that vein, I highlight this, this and this, so that you may glimpse the precise nature of this distant land presently under your feet.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Two unrelated thoughts:
(1) Every once in a while, I get the "Who am I and what the hell am I doing?" vibe which leads me to me that I whatever I would write about myself would be strange, unproductive, and self-serving.
(2) People who love injecting anecdotes into policy-related threads on the assumption that they will be instructive, germane, or interesting are wrong on all three counts about 99.2% of the time, and that figure is from the Internet Anecdote Analysis Bureau (IAAB).
Your writing about yourself anyway. That's what people don't get. Even your explanation as to why you don't do it, says something about who you are.
Your fandom of the Cowboys--an enigma wrapped inside of an enigma. Can't remember if you said you lived in Philly as a kid, but DC and NY as a grown man.
heh... 2/3 of those 'about me' posts you link to here were springboarded off of "Big Love"
"A man is worked on by what he works on."
That's a great aphorism. I'd never heard that one before.
Full, and more accurate, quote:
"A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well."
This helps someone like me who only started coming here a few months ago. Man, it takes some guts to share your personal life, thoughts, ideas like you do. Love the family picture! Had no idea Big Love was such a theme.
What's so amazing is that I am one of you newer commenters in that I only registered a couple weeks ago, and only began to visit your site every day as part of my blog-reading around the same time, but I'd seen all three of the posts you linked to as foundational.
There is, of course, a reason I've started reading you every day, and it has a lot to do with what I've seen when I've followed links here from other bloggers. The day I realized that I always wanted to follow any link to your blog was the day you got a dedicated tab on my browser.
I couldn't have been prepared for what I found. What you've written in the past 2 weeks here, particularly the threads on reconstruction and the civil war and what it means to us today, have been some of the most provocative and intelligent words I've read anywhere. Someone said you are blogging at a particularly high level. Not just blogging, writing, and thinking. It's a privilege to be a part of your early audience.
/blush
Thanks!