Nobody Has Fun the First Time

Okay, so it may seem as though I got on the blog train late (which is generally unlike me - according to Gladwell, though I'm not usually an early adopter, I'm often in that first trickle of the mainstream into all that is cool and new, telling all my friends about it and ruining it for all the OG's), the fact is, I've been blogging since July of 2002, when, over a summer spent trapped in Miami with way too many members of my immediate and extended family, blogging became a matter of survival (my family's as much as my own - my little brother came close to death on at least three separate occasions over those six to eight weeks).

But it was a Livejournal, and although it ended up quite a different thing than what it started, it was never really meant for public consumption. Back then, my ideas and understanding of a web audience were muddled at best, if I had any at all, and further, back then, I think the reality of a web audience was about as clear. My journal ended up being quite private, and turning, for the most part, exactly into what it might have been meant to be to begin with - a journal, with access limited to a very small handful of people, in which I express all my angst, anxiety, record my dreams, and essentially dump and try to sort out all that squishy, vulnerable, sometimes uncomfortably personal stuff that is better kept out of view of the general public - or even most people I know. Beside that, the scope of blogging has shifted. Now, it seems as though everybody has a blog, and that almost as many people read them. And the baby jebus knows I've never been able to resist a soap box for long.

I was really reticent to start a blog because these things are undeniably one of the most blatant and rampant forms of narcissism that teh internets offer today - which is saying a lot considering the existence of Twitter (which is a really unsettling little chunk of egocentrism in itself. Do I really need to be giving a blow-by-blow account of every minute of the silly shit I occupy my time with? Of course not. But I guess the more important question is, does anyone really want to read it? I don't know, but I honestly hope not. That would be creepy. I don't even want to read that shit, and I'm kind of a egomaniac). Anyway, while I can't deny I do enjoy a little narcissism, and hearing myself talk (or reading myself write), I'm probably self-important enough without being given a public platform from which to launch rants, randomness, and the general nonsense that fills my brain.

But let's be honest, all it took was two people saying "You should totally blog" for me to be like, "OMG IT IS MY RIGHT AND DUTY AS AN AMERICAN TO UTILIZE THIS NEW AND EXCITING WAY TO RUN OFF AT THE MOUTH!"

In my old Livejournal, I was friended to someone who said something along the lines of, "every writer needs two things: inspiration, and an audience to write for."

Personally, inspiration sounds like kind of a namby pamby bullshit kind of thing. It's not that I doubt its existence, or even that I haven't experienced it. But in my experience, it's way easier to force yourself to write when you have an audience and no inspiration than when you have inspiration and no audience. I'd have notebooks full of half-baked "inspired" ideas if for most of my life I hadn't been too damn lazy to get off my ass and get a notebook.

But this is how it goes.

So maybe I'll get myself an audience. Maybe you're the first person beside me who's reading this (although I'll already have re-read it at least five times, I'm sure). Maybe you're the fifteenth. Or maybe I'm the only person who'll ever read it. (Although most likely, I'll sucker at least one or two of my friends into at least skimming. HA! Hi guys!) Either way, what will probably follow are posts in which I talk about stuff. Maybe observations, maybe stories, maybe half-coherent rambles or self-righteous rants about whatever catches my interest at any given point. But I figure I can't do much worse than some of the other dreck that's out there - and worst case scenario, I can always start posting pictures of my favorite lolcats.

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