Private Melissa, meet public Melissa

Thanks to endless hours scouring Craigslist.com for work both here and elsewhere, I stumbled across a New York ad looking for writers for a culture blog. Unpaid, but I checked anyway. The first post I saw on the blog was about the passing of New Orleans restaurant owner Joe Casamento. Casamento’s is a tiny Old New Orleans hole-in-the-wall down the street from me on Magazine and Napoleon. I hadn’t known Joe died; apparently few people did. Just out of the “aw, shucks, Joe’s dead” factor, I decided to apply for the position. And I got it.

I don’t really know anything about these people or this blog. It fits in well with my love for pop culture, and the blog owner, Kim (who's based in LA. Odd that an LA-based blog was advertised in the NYC Craigslist and landed a Louisiana writer), was excited to have someone from New Orleans join the staff.

You know, there are people who make their living writing about their lives on weblogs? I find this extraordinary—unfathomable, actually. But, I suppose it’s a somewhat natural offshoot of the new reality-based entertainment culture. There’s a woman in Utah named Heather Armstrong who is supporting her family with her blog on motherhood Dooce. She’s hilarious—vulgar and a bit twisted.

Don’t worry, Ma, family, etc, I’m not looking to make this my next career move or anything. Yes, I know, I need health insurance, a retirement plan… and this current gig is unpaid. But I’m a little excited that people outside of my teeny sphere will be seeing some of my writing.

Anyway, the site, Subcrawl, is not family-friendly. There’s some slightly racy stuff on the site. My stuff will remain as it always has been, friendly for just about everyone except perhaps my grandmother. I’ll be focusing mostly on feet-on-the-ground stuff from New Orleans. Hope to highlight some of the stuff that’s not being widely reported in national news.

The private-meet-personal note is that this blog will be linked to Subcrawl, so it’s possible some strangers may be checking in. I won’t alter the content of this blog at all. It remains for family and friends to keep abreast of my life (and I haven’t the foggiest how many of you still check in). But if you want to see more newsy reporting from me, you don’t have to sift through the rest of Subcrawl; you can find a listing of all my postings here. I already have two postings. I’m going to go back over Displaced and make sure there’s nothing on the blog that gives out any family secrets—I don’t want to be David Sedaris or anything.