Steps

A few days ago, it came to my attention that a few of my friends that I don't talk to as much as I'd like have blogs set up, and I got the idea that I would return to my freshman-year glory days of mild livejournal celebrity and join the fun. This was abetted by the fact that I was recently told by a cute girl that I was a "computer kid" because I "had an online journal before [this person] knew how to use the internet," which had me embarrassed until this girl (who is very cute) told me that she had actually really enjoyed reading what I had to say. This compliment from this cute girl had the effect of stroking my sometimes overinflated ego, and moving me to start an earlier version of this very weblog. However, a couple nights ago, in a fit of severe (and, unfortunately, all-too-common lately) self-loathing, I decided to delete the blog and leave the world of online journaling behind forever. This was a little silly of me.

When I was eighteen, I wrote a lot. I wrote songs, I wrote poems, I wrote stories, I wrote notes and letters, I wrote scraps of nonsense on scraps of paper, and sometimes, I was really proud of the things that I wrote. Somewhere along the way, this all stopped. I blame this on the passage of time, a reorganization of priorities, a beautiful girl who I wanted to like me so much that I changed myself for her, and a series of small floods and fires (that last bit shamelessly cribbed from Dave Eggers), among many other things. Ennui set in. I met people who were better writers than me, and I decided I'd be a better drummer than they were. I got a BBA I never wanted.

I have put nary a pen to paper without a practical purpose in years. Now, here I am all of a sudden in my mid twenties, reading more than I have in years, thinking more critically than I have in years, and I want this. I feel like I've been unforgivably neglectful of a crucial part of my brain and my life. The problem is, now I'm terrified of writing anything. I worry about writing trite, meaningless bullshit with hollow metaphors, and I feel that because I know I'm not as good as my influences, I should just leave it up to the pros. I fear failure. This is of course, stupid, and a total cop out.

My life has been a series of baby steps interspersed with some bigger steps, just like most everybody else's (unfortunately, I know too many people with too few bigger steps at this point in my life). In the past year or two, I've made a lot more of those bigger type steps. I graduated college. I'm in a job where I'm responsible for not just my own financial welfare, but that of members of my family, at a business where, if I don't do my job right, the business could fail. I bought a car. I experienced the most real and fulfilling romantic relationship of my life with a girl I really loved, and I'm continuing to struggle with and learn from its ending. I've become closer with some people and drifted away from others. Life has been. I feel like I'm growing up more, growing into the adult that I want to be, and I'm legitimately pumped for the future, but I know that not everything has to be a big step, and I think knowing that right now while being excited for whatever comes is a pretty healthy place for me to be right now. I realize that comparing writing a blog to a life change like graduating college is pretty ridiculous, and I guess that's my point. I want to write, so I will write.

Here I will post things I'm thinking, or reading/watching/listening to, or doing, of finding interesting or funny or sad. I look forward to this thing because I think it will be fun and mentally productive, and I hope that people will be interested in reading it.