Introduction

It all happened rather quickly, I think - this decision to start a blog. I generally viewed them as time wasting devices, and my writing media of choice is pen and paper (70 pages, spiral, college-rule). I didn't have anything I wanted to tell other people, especially not on the internet, and what I wanted to say to myself was easily transcribed in ink (it was pencil, until I realized that pencil more quickly rubs away with time).

Clearly, my opinions are changing.

Perhaps it's the influence of college, but I feel much more able to get my ideas out onto a computer screen now than I did before. Plus, I don't have as much of a chance to sit down with a notebook anymore. However, thanks to homework and email, I'm never very far away from a computer. This medium is slowly becoming the more convenient one. It seems somewhat necessary as well. In notebooks, my thoughts are spaced out linearly with respect to both time and space, since the best way to arrange notebooks is to stack them next to each other and flip through when you want to find or reference something. However, more of my notebook references are coming from/resulting in drawings or photos or websites. These things are readily acessible and referenceable with a computer, but not so for actual physical paper. And, I don't like scrapbooks yet.

I'm becoming more interested in preservation and presentation. Unless something happens to the data I post here and it completely disappears, it will not wear away or turn yellow or smudge. And, when I get this site organized, it will look nice. I guess I think of this blog as a compiler for things that contribute to how I process the world I experience. After all, this is what I intend to do: I have several years worth of notebooks, many things not written in said notebooks, a cluttered desktop (physically, and on my computer), and things which I should've written down but haven't yet. They're scattered, but they're important components. I would like to bring them together in the same place.
So this blog is for me. Not for you.

But why on a blog?
In addition to being convenient, a blog gives some semblance of an audience. I would like very much for my future to include publishing writing or art or photography. Lots of other writers and photographers have blogs. I used to think that was sort of silly to resort to publishing on a blog. But, since this blog is for me, I decided I would like to use it to practice putting something out for a (possibly) unknown audience. It will be both my archive and my resume (I don't know how to make the accents on vowels yet). But not completely.

I took a poetry class last year, and we mostly worked on revising our work for an audience. This was interesting because though I've written a lot, I've always written for myself. Interestingly enough, I understand (or later discover) all the allusions in my writing, but for some reason other people often don't get these things. This results in images which I think are compelling actually diluting my work because other people don't understand what they refer to and to them it has content equivalent to filler. If I want to someday write something for other people, it will be good to practice containing the power of ideas in images that have relevance to the world outside of me. However, I also hope that recurring themes and images will begin to define and reference themselves so that their allusions will mean something to more than just me.

I'll help you out. The line about the 'power of ideas' was a reference to V for Vendetta, possibly one of my favorite movies right now. The further connotation then (I may not be using the word 'connotation' exactly right) is that, properly contained, the ideas shall be bulletproof. 'Bulletproof' here is a reference to how they should have the ability to stand in all significance and make clear their interpretation to the any reader. Digging deeper, we remember that V, nameless and faceless, contained an idea. No, he wasn't exactly bulletproof, but the idea lived, and when she was asked, 'Who was he?' Evie replied, '... He is all of us...' His idea was not his alone, but was taken up by an entire population who understood - maybe not entirely - but yet understood, and this had power.
I want to be able to choose words and images carefully enough so that people other than me understand. I think it's possible. I know we all have different connotations and experiences with words. I know that in Intro Linguistics right now, I'm leaning towards more of a social rather than formal interpretation of language. But, I think there are some inescapable ideas, images, experiences that run deep through humanity in general. And if I can just choose the right words in the right order at the right times, the verbal packaging will correctly betray the idea inside.

I've been typing for a while, and I need to move on to other things (starting a somewhat ambitious blog with time constraints all ready... we'll see if this works out...). I'll start wrapping this post up.
Here are some basics:

I will try to be disciplined enough about my writing to think about things and write about them in a coherent, interesting manner on a somewhat regular basis.

I anticipate that since a reason for this blog is to practice presentability and writing for an audience, I will not make this into some kind of diary for my most inner personal secrets. I still have a notebook. It shall not go unused.
I've often considered online journaling or blogging to be associated mostly with people who had nothing better to do, or just wrote about how depressing their own little lives were. I figured, if I actually wanted people to know stuff, I'd just talk to them. I will justify writing on the internet by supposing that I probably won't write anything here that I wouldn't tell you if you asked me. I further justify myself by remembering that I now have friends in different parts of the country and talking with people is no longer as easy.

At this point, you may wonder: if this is so, why didn't you tell me about your blog?
I wanted to keep it to myself for a little while. Yes, I do want experience writing for an audience, but just typing into this screen is enough to make me imagine that someone might read it. eventually. This is enough of a threat to discipline my writing with.
And, even though I'm posting on the internet, and it's supposedly nothing I wouldn't tell you if you asked, it's still a little weird.

It's like growing plants indoors before you transplant them to the garden.

And I think I secretly wish I had an old blog to look back on (yes, I know I have old notebooks).
I heard that the thing in architecture these days is to make homes look as if they are old farm houses which have been built up over the years. So they are made in little attachment-looking blocks with stone for part and bricks for part and wood for something else. I learned this because my parents are thinking of remodelling or building an addition to our house. We have an old farmhouse. Apparently, if we put an addition onto it, we will have what everyone else is trying to imitate in their new houses. I think the new houses are disgusting. They look so new and fake like giant barns with no purpose. It's this obscenely giant awkward bulk in the middle of like, a few neatly clipped acres. It looks nothing like a farm. They are like, the Wal*Mart to our Ma&Pop old farmhouse.

But, anyway. That's kind of what I'm trying to do here, I think. If I post for a while before telling people, it's almost as if they're discovering something old when really, it was current but they didn't know about it.
sneaky, huh?

I really hope this blog won't be like a disgusting, imitative, fake farmhouse.
I determine that it will not.

Well, here we go.