For the past few months, I’ve wanted to start my own blog. I’ve been hesitant and procrastinated as one typically does – there just seemed to be too much in the way. Like, why? Why make yet another blog to toss into this world filled with countless impulses and headlines and things-you-need-to-read. I truly wrestle with this argument on an almost daily basis, constantly asking myself: does this world need more?
How often do you remember what happened three weeks ago? You know, that one thing you read, where you slowly nodded your head and silently muttered, ‘This is good‘. What was it? Why is it that we need to re-learn all of those little pieces of wisdom that hit us? I truly don’t think it has to do with our memory. Sure, recall is a part of the puzzle, but is it the real struggle? How many pieces of information does your brain process or take in through out the day? Your morning routine, the drive to work, hundreds of signs you see, but don’t notice. All of the conversations you have throughout the day, remembering the things you need to get done, scrolling through your email and social media preference(s). When you’re at lunch and a barrage of menu items call out to you, and with 20 or more decision possibilities, you still have trouble figuring out how to nourish your body. That’s all you’re really doing isn’t it? You’re also satisfying a craving or an emotional impulse to somehow feel better. All day you’re busy, with thinking and your brain just doesn’t stop processing information. It’s hard to remember what happened three weeks ago, because so much has happened since then. Your brain isn’t exactly being strengthened or challenged. It’s growing distracted, dazing into the repition of existing.
YouTube video compilations, Game of Thrones season finale, The President sends out a tweet most 14 year olds are eager to read, another video of something-you-just-had-to-click-to-believe (see: click bait) and then a pop-up: some pop singer gives their take on the world and offends everyone in the comments. It doesn’t stop. Entertainment, Politics, Entertainment, Social Media. It all feels like a show these days where we all insert a quarter into our design rated machines and dull our eyes as we witness the polarizations of what most call human experience/behavior. Most extreme this – a million views that. News feeds and picture albums. Even our political worlds divide more and more into two ends of a long pole, balancing above a tall, tall tower of absurdity. Growing comfortable.
So why write more I ask myself. Even inspiring writings can be too much for me. So many inspiring things obliterate our minds. Tumblr and it’s million memes of positive quotes from famous, dead poets. Becuase they all found what they wanted to say and they said it. Because it’s those souls on this earth who remain dedicated to only a handful of (if even that) thoughts or ideas or practices a day that truly develop themselves. The ‘rule’ of 10,000 hours explains that if you dedicate 10,000 or more hours to something, you can and probably will master it. Even that could be a truly inspiring idea to someone. But we live in a world saturated in information. So why add more? Maybe the urge to add more is the one thing we need to suppress. Perhaps the contemplation of why we need to add more is the very thing we need in order to really test our reality and so we don’t do it, to prove to ourselves – and not based on the ‘they do it, so i’ll do it’ mentality – that what we share is something true and of us, and must be said. And someone might inspired to more, deeper life with that. Maybe that is why it matters.
But maybe none of that really matters to you. Maybe you find happiness in waking up everyday, living the way you know, careful to stick to what you know, insistent on satisfying your impulses and short attention span. I have heard before that we are simply a by-product of our habits. That, our habits truly define who we are.
Yet here we are, at the start again. A blog post. Another record in some floating database, imprisoned by a server rack in some secured building. In it, something to read to add to your day.
My only hope is that we begin to unravel or manage, or even maintain:
And what?
Whatever you find important in life. Whatever it is you pursue and cannot live without. Whatever enables you to be more free from the “us” and “them” mentality. Maybe it’s to make others laugh, and feel more human. And maybe it’s because you’re just tired of the pain living life causes.
So I will share with you, the reader – the things I find important. And maybe you will find them helpful, or inspiring, or frustrating, or trivial. But I don’t want to waste any more time drooling over my excuses and laziness. Life is not promised, and this world is not something that accommodates to your hopes. It just is – moving forward at the same speed it always has. Whether a blog to me becomes an archival of ideas – open to the collective reader, or a place to share my travels and well, anything I want to share – SO BE IT. At least I will have written something other than a book full of ‘To be continued'(s). And that is important to me.
And so, this is the beginning of the blog – of where I share my life, or document it really. I’m just allowing an audience to view whatever comes. Isn’t that entertaining?