Seeking: an anonymous blogger
[bumped, because she's been located; see update at the bottom of the post]
I'm looking for an anonymous blogger.
What's that you say?
Why bless you, young sir/madam. Yes, that's true, I am in fact _an_ anonymous blogger. In fact, I'm even An Anonymous Lawyer, or an anonymous blawger. All true. Yes.
How true.
What's that?
Oh. Right. My point.
I'm not looking for me. I wake up in the morning, brush my teeth, comb my hair, stare into my beautiful eyes in the mirror, then put on my flowing cape emblazoned with "Eh. N." and my red boots and...
Right, my point.
I read a blog briefly, perhaps a month or two ago. She was an anonymous blogger, an anonymous lawyer, and she had a template that looked, believe it or not, just like this one. That means she used Blogger to blawg for free. She was a NY Associate at an Unnamed Firm, and she had some sort of clever blogging name, indicating her thoughtfulness or her acuity or her literary sense or her devilish charm; I forget entirely.
I made a mental note to visit the blog again in the future, see if she had kept it up, if further developments had occurred, that sort of thing. From reading the Stankowski Report, Anonymous Lawyer, Phantom Prof, and Coyote Law among others I have become fond of anonymous blawgs that are well-written.
Alas, Evan did not take note of her; she was, he pointed out, one of those bloggers without a blogroll. The point he makes, I think, is that unless one blogrolls, even if comments are open, one is not in any sense a part of the blawging community. Blawgging? Blogging, ergo blawgging? It looks too ugly with two g's after a w; I declare it to be blawging, analogous to scrawling or trawling.
One may, in point of fact, be a member of the blawging movement, or even a supporter of and avid reader of blawgs; but unless one maintains permanent links, shows who the community is (I just joined a legally inclined weblogs ring, look down the right side of my blog after the other links), one is On One's Own. I put up a link to Evan, and to Volokh and to Kleiman, as soon as I got rolling. After all, Who Am I, unless I tell people What I Read?
So: a call for a blawger- one in particular. Have you seen her? Are you her (she? no, her)? Is she still working at Unnamed BigLaw Firm in NYC, does she still have Boyfriend and Cat, is she still living in an apartment? I don't actually care about her personal life, I'm interested in her writing. Anonymous Associate, where are you? Come back. I want to link to you.
sincerely, Eh Nonymous
[update: Found her! Or rather, she found me. Thanks, "Lawgirl," aka Opinionista, of http://opinionistas.blogspot.com/. I'm not sure if an opinionista is one who has opinions, and if opinionistas.blogspot should therefore be read as Opinionista's Blog spot, but I do know this:
You post, frequently. You write at great length, with little decorum. You are blunt, hilarious, and your screeds about filthy partners, unconscionable billable hours, and zombie-like associates make for fun reading... from a distance. I wouldn't want to be in that apparently hellish environment, the occasional positive feedback or no; I'll stay right here on the Light Side of the Force. See, for example, the other Lawgirl at On Firm Ground, http://onfirmground.blogspot.com/, who is a 3rd year associate in a small firm.
Also: I notice that much like "anonymous" for blogging purposes, Lawgirls (and Lawgeeks and some variants) are pandemic in this part of the blogosphere. Are we so uncreative? Do we have so little to say with our chosen names? In my case, yes.
Eh N.]
posted by Joe G @ 7/21/2005 11:02:00 AM
3 comments
3 Comments:
http://onfirmground.blogspot.com/ ?
kevin, thanks for commenting. No, On Firm Ground's "Lawgirl" isn't her. Isn't she? Regardless.
The blog I mean had the same color scheme as mine - I mean, same blue title block, same black background, same green "about me" square, the works - because both she and I had chosen that template when we started our blogger accounts. It's one of the prettiest but still readable ones, or vice versa, in my opinion.
Of course, she might have changed it...
But I think I would recognize her blogging name (something with a feminine ending, something like -trix or -tress or -a, on a one-word descriptor that summed up... something about her. And I'm sure her blog posts, which had lots of comments and were about the precarious position she was in blogging about the hellish law firm environment, would be unmistakeable.
I recall just one of her posts with any clarity- hope this isn't the pebble that starts the avalanche of recognition that outs her. She wrote about a law firm free lunch, where she was singled out and praised by (male) associates for eating as if she liked food, instead of being anorexic like all the other female associates. She was appalled... and so was I... and hopefully so are you. Her post concluded with a brief condemnation of that kind of idiocy from male lawyers, given how pernicious, how deadly, how unsought and unfair eating disorders are.
I have a particular horror of that kind of mental disorder; I love food almost above life itself. The old eat-to-live/ live-to-eat dichotomy.
Anyway, thanks for posting, and I guess I'll have to read Lawgirl's OFG blog now too. Darnit. Of all the luck. Being forwarded interesting blog links by helpful readers. Curse my fate.
Oooops.
That's what I get for not mousing over people's names here in the comments.
Correction: Lawgirl is Lawgirl, Opinionista is Opinionista, and OFG's Lawgirl is the one who provided the link to Opinionista, who, it turns out, is probably and approximately 15 times as popular as I am, based on numbers of comments alone. :)
That's what you get when you are an Anonymous Associate in New York City At A Big Firm, and trumpet the fact that you are Hot... and what you don't get when you are Me.
Me: not in NYC. Not at a Big Firm. Hot only in my own mind, and to those of my fans who agree with me.
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