I'm pretty sure I couldn't make it there

I lie to myself and everyone else and say I once lived in NYC. I didn't, though. Not really. I stayed there for a month for what I later realized was an ill-advised career program. I lived in a hostel up on Amsterdam and took classes and didn't do a whole lot other than drink and walk so slowly people scowled at me.

But I always thought I should live there, at some point, because I dreamed of being in the publishing industry. And then life happened and graduate school happened and the publishing industry existed in DC, too, and it just seemed like I got too old for it to be worthwhile to up and move to the hard, fast world of NYC. So I didn't. But sometimes, just occasionally, I wish I did.

Tina did. She took a fairly ritzy-sounding job in New York and moved from Seattle and logs her experiences as a newbie New Yorker. Fascinating, right? Well, it should be.

Let's just get the design out of the way. It's your standard white Blogger template with no personality. The header is a bit large, although I do like the picture. The subscribe section just under the header is overkill -- it should be off to the side. Hello, off-putting. It screams "LOVE ME!" Just take me to the content. And move the stuff in the sidebar to tabs. Roll up your archives. Give us an About page.

I should love this blog. Cute Seattle girl moves to NYC and works in the news and drinks a fair amount and tries to find her way around. But, especially at first, the writing is very much "letters to home." There's a serious lack of editing and most of the posts are ungodly long. And, Christ, the ellipses overkill. These are such a crutch. Get rid of them entirely. They should only -- and, dammit, I mean ONLY -- be used when you're trailing off an idea or when there is missing information from quoted material. And if you trail off every single idea you have and so tack on the ellipses then I don't want to read you. Be concise. Have a thought and finish it.

Though quite a few of the "girl in NYC" stories are interesting, they're robbed of life by the writer's slap it on the screen style. There's an inelegance that interrupts these could-be-interesting vignettes, especially when she writes about things like roaches. Who cares? Do you care, Tina? In five years are you going to want to know about that roach? Maybe you will, but I pretty much don't, not unless you can make that roach enthralling, hilarious, or terrifying, none of which you've done.

I think I'm being extra harsh because the potential is here for a really interesting blog. But it's just not delivering. Though the author is candid about her identity, we don't learn anything real about her other than her various encounters with the denizens of New York and her love for Lyle Lovett. There's not a lot of depth provided, and maybe that's precisely because she's written her name on the blog.

Tina, I did some snooping (it wasn't difficult) and discovered your title is or was "writer." Why aren't you writing here? You're just jotting down snippets of your life, without care, without editing, without polishing, without pulling in your reader. In scrolling through, I notice there are very few comments from readers. And maybe that's the point. This blog is for you, for posterity, not for us.

If you want it to be otherwise (and I hope you do, considering you submitted for a review), clean up the sidebar clutter, give us some organization, and write like you care that we're reading. If you don't, just keep this stuff in a ruled notebook by your bed, carry it in your huge ass purse and jot things down on the subway when the crazies come out. Because if you don't care about us, why should we care about you?

Right now I think I prefer nasty to namaste

Edited: Right now the very last thing I need in my life is more conflict, so in the interest of soothing ruffled feathers, even though certain folks should have realized they'd be ruffled given the title of our blog, and even though they checked that they'd read the FAQ, and even though there are no takesies backsies in blog reviewing, I'm removing the links (even though I wasn't asked to). 'Cause I'm decent like that. I will not, however, remove the review, since I spent a long damn time on it and produced it in good faith.

I've never been punched. I've never been slapped. I've never been choked or kicked. I've never even been shoved, except as a child by other children rough-housing. No one has ever laid a hand on me in anger, not really. My mother spanked me, but not often and not hard. I don't know what it's like to reel away from violence, to feel the smash of flesh and bone. My heart has taken its share of beatings, but my body hasn't. Knowing the statistics, reading the stories, I count myself lucky.

She [blogger redacted] was not so lucky.

This is what her blog centers around -- a single act of violence and her attempts at recovery. It's an intensely personal blog, which is in some ways difficult to judge. Because it's not for us, not really. I don't mean that there aren't people out there who should read this, who would want to read this -- I just mean the primary purpose isn't, or doesn't seem to be, discourse, dialog, or community, or even writing, really. The motivation for writing is so very emotional and visceral. She's writing to process, to heal. And critiquing that is hard for me, especially now when my own personal blog has gone from amusing essays to tears on the blogworld's shoulder.

But y'all ain't paying me to wax philosophical and melodramatic, are you? And she deserves a review. So.

There's poetry, oh goody. There's an its/it's problem. She has "Read full posts" links, which are annoying as hell. The design is benign and we see it all the time, but it's not too cluttered and there's a pretty header. She makes good use of tabs, but I'd put all your links on a tab, too. Thanks for the drop-downs, but get rid of all the other useless crap in your sidebar.

The tone of the blog is very woo-woo spiritual personal discovery, which I admit I can be partial to, when I'm not utterly embarrassed by it. And most of the posts are loooooong. And deep. And kind of exhausting. And when you have to click to read more, and the posts are already kind of long-winded and wordy and written with this very zen and meditative tone... well, I didn't click to read more as often as I might have. Even the ribald stuff is a bit, oh, I don't know. Contemplative, I guess.

I found her story interesting and heartbreaking and, if I'm being honest, not terribly easy for me to relate to. I kind of hate that I said that, but I just don't have the same sphere of reference. The spiritual journey, the PTSD, the gurus and yoginis and spiritual retreats and all that looking inward. I don't know -- I'm a little tired of my own innards right now, so I'm sure that's coloring my perspective.

God, didn't you guys miss me terribly? All this indecisiveness and malaise is riveting.

So. Bottom line. I liked it but I didn't love it. I think the writing could use some work. Tighten it up and edit, learn that whole its/it's thing, give us more action and less thinking. (I'm so tired of thinking.) I like that you're using blogging to process these things because I think it's therapeutic and helpful and someday you'll want to read all this stuff and remember and recognize how far you've come. And people in the same boat, or tied to your flotilla, will appreciate your insight and your journey. I just think I'm going to sail my boat in a different direction right now. Toward puppies and Firefly episodes and chocolate cake and books where people don't think so much.