Secret Origins

Whether you're coming in fresh or you've been reading me for years, welcome! For those who came in late: I used to blog (more and more infrequently as time went on) over at Livejournal, and now that once-mighty service has died a death I thought I'd venture out into the wider internet and so I've placed myself here. Two people in the last week have told me that I need to write, so I took that as extra impetus to get cracking. (Katie and Pete, if you're reading this, thank you for the support!). This blog will probably be fairly similar to my writings of old: a mixture of life chronicling, project info, martial arts, random thoughts, sprinkled with the odd dose of pop culture.

Socrates said that the unexamined life was not worth living, and while I think that view might be a little extreme, I can see the sentiment. So for a first post, why not look at why I'm doing this?

-There are very few things that I have a natural aptitude for. If writing is one of them, as some people have suggested, I think I owe it to myself to explore it further. That's going to take practice - Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Outliers: The Story of Success (which I have not read and should probably add to the list) posits the idea that it takes around 10,000 hours to achieve mastery in a particular field. If this is true, then I've got some way to go. At an hour a day that works out to 27 years!

One of my favourite quotes on the subject of writing:

"A writer is one for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people" -Thomas Mann

The nice thing about doing stuff is that the more you do a particular thing, the easier it tends to get. If you're a writer and a reader, you no doubt know the feeling of discovering a piece of prose that makes you think "I'm never going to be half the wordsmith this person is".  I'm hoping eventually that with time and practice and as I grow in life I can silence that inner chatter telling me "You've got nothing to say."

-Many of us are, I think, trying to figure out who we are. But I believe that this passive search is only a part of it. The other part is actually deciding who we will be. Strong characters often emerge from terribly disadvantaged backgrounds - from poverty or abuse or otherwise broken homes. They find the will to fight back, to ensure that their life will never have to take that turn again. The results can be amazing. Now, I may have issues with my parents (don't we all?) but there is no way that you could ever describe my childhood as being tough. I am lucky. I have been able to afford to be laid back. If I am to turn myself into something special, I must provide my own stimuli. This requires planning and thought. Here's a good place to work some of that stuff out.

I find that the more I write, and think about writing, the more I actually take time to think about experiences and events and thoughts and what they actually mean, rather than just going through the motions. This must be a good thing.

-One of the greatest uses of the internet, if you discount Youtube comments and AOL, is discussion. No-one should be an island, so let's talk! Tell me if I'm full of shit or if my writing and ideas suck. I'll probably still love you. Probably.

You know what one of the best things about dating humanities majors was, for me? (3 for 3 so far. Hmm...) Having discussions with and bouncing ideas off people who are smart in ways that I may never be.

-I can be really lazy if I let myself be, so putting my ideas and goals out there for all to see provides me with a little bit of accountability. Perhaps not the best way to get motivation, but I'll take anything that works!

-Blogs act as a kind of life archival. I'm sure that there are a ton of things I should have written down at the time when they happened. What can I say, I'm a memory packrat (as well as a digital one).

Hm. Perhaps that was not too bad a first post for someone who's got nothing to say.