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?