I decided to browse through my del.icio.us links, because, hey, what better way to get inspired than to check out the source? I was about halfway through my fifth page when it dawned on me that the only audience I really have is myself. I don't mean that I'm the only one who reads my writing, although often that is the truth. I mean that I write to please only myself. It's awesome when other people compliment my work, but if I think my work is shitty, all of the compliments in the world will not convince me otherwise.

I feel the same about subject matter. If I think my subject matter is dull, then there's no way in hell that I will get the reader interested in it, either. On the other hand, I've been turned onto some pretty random shit simply because someone wrote about it with enthusiasm and style. Enthusiasm is infectious. Only a statue (or, I suppose, a teenager) can remain stone-faced in the presence of unbridled enthusiasm.

My del.icio.us account isn't all that different. I tagged the stuff I liked as I came across as I used it, so my tags tend to represent the broad categories of my personal interests. My inner librarian surfaces with my sizable collection of reference links. I tagged a bunch of news stories I found particularly well-done, just like any good journalism student would. I've got lots of links about racism, war, injustice, environmental problems, gender issues, health and music. I picked what I liked, and hopefully my taste is discriminating enough that others will find it interesting as well. And if not, then who cares? I'm still my primary audience, and as long as I'm happy then I'm on the right track.

Of course, not all of my tags are general categories. Take my 'joe-fucking-francis' tag. I have massive long-standing hatred towards Joe Francis (aka the man responsible for Girls Gone Wild), and so when the LA Times published a story in which he assaults the reporter and has apparently non-consensual sex (which, in my world, is rape, but I guess it's not that way in LA) with an 18 year old girl, I just had to dedicate a whole tag to him.

(Wow, I dedicated a whole paragraph to Joe Francis. See? I really do hate him. If you ever want to entertain yourself, just ask me why I hate him. I recommend grabbing a bag of popcorn before you do so because I can go on for a while.)

I'll finish this up by including a list of my tags:

3 abortion

1 accessibility

8 activism

1 aging

2 aids/hiv

1 anti-war

6 art

6 artists

1 assholes

1 beer

4 blog

17 blogs

1 bookmarking

2 bureaucracy

1 cats

1 census

1 children

1 colbert

4 comics

1 crafting

1 crafts

1 crazy

2 crime

5 css

1 cybernetics

1 death-penalty

7 depressing

3 design

7 diy

1 domestic

1 earmarks

3 ecology

2 education

6 environment

3 ethics

1 fashion

1 femicide

9 feminism

1 flowers

1 fonts

6 food

8 funny

7 gardening

3 geek

1 genocide

1 geopolitics

1 girls

4 global

1 global-warming

2 hate

12 health

1 hilarious

4 history

1 homeless

1 hotness

3 hpv

1 hysteria

5 indie

3 information

13 injustice

4 internet

1 investigation

1 iran

1 joe-fucking-francis

23 journalism

3 justice

1 knitting

1 knowledge

1 language

3 law

1 librarians

1 libraries

17 media

1 meth

1 military

1 motivation

2 mp3

1 multimedia

9 music

13 news

1 nutrition

8 online

1 oppression

1 organization

2 photos

1 photoshop

3 plants

1 police

15 politics

2 porn

3 poverty

1 power

1 pregnancy

2 publishing

1 queer

4 racism

1 rape

23 reference

1 rhetoric

1 RIAA

1 scary

1 secrets

5 sex

6 sexism

2 social-networking

3 st.pete

2 sustainability

1 sustainable

1 tagging

1 tags

2 tampa

4 technology

10 tools

1 transgender

2 travel

1 vaccines

1 video

1 war

4 web

6 web2.0

7 webdesign

8 women

1 writers

3 writing

3 zines