Monday, March 7, 2011

The Obligatory First Post

And so it begins.


I wasn't sure how to start this, so I'll just jump in and see where it goes.

For a long time I'd been planning to do a basic blog, but most successful blogs have a narrow focus or gimmick, like Let's See What Candy I Ate Today or Something Else That's Blue That I Wore To Work, and I didn't want to have one of those meandering blogs that usually fall into the Random Musings Of A Boring Person category.

Though I'm not seeking readers, having some kind of focus will help when it comes to updating this thing: do I write about the sandwich I ate, my views on the political situation in Libya, the upcoming Knicks game, or the arguably amusing stuff my kids said this morning?

I wanted to start some kind of blog, at least to keep my writing going every day (or every other day, or however I plan to update this. I planned to begin on January 1, but the date came and went and I pondered what my focus would be. With Ash Wednesday a couple of days away, I decided to make blogging part of my Lenten sacrifice. Or something.

WHAT I PLAN TO BLOG ABOUT
Well, I'm not sure. I'm guessing that I'll be all over the place for a while, and then something will gel and I'll realize I enjoy writing every day about Different Tap Waters I Have Tried or Pictures Of The Treads Of My Car's Tires. Until then, here are some but not all of the subjects I might graze, in no particular order:
  • Excerpts of crap that I'm writing
  • Recent and past dreams
  • Religion
  • History
  • Songs I like
  • Movies
  • Rap songs I have recorded
  • Interesting stuff I find on Wikipedia
  • YouTube detritus
  • Memories from grade/junior/high school
  • Things I like
  • Things that bother me
  • People who bother me
  • Fashion blogs (this is not a joke)
  • A great number of things that won't initially interest you, but which you might suddenly find interesting...
  • ...or not
  • Things that probably won't make sense -- to either of us
  • Drinking, and being drunk
  • Food (so yes, look forward to many a post regarding peanut butter and jelly)
  • Self-pitying -- lots of it
WHAT I PROBABLY WON'T BLOG ABOUT
I'm not a believer in using a blog to purge every personal thought, to settle scores, or to reveal too much information about certain subjects. Some of my own personal restrictions will hamper some of the topics that I listed above, too. So, you probably won't get much info about:
  • Sex
  • Anything that would embarrass or enrage close members of my family
  • Anything about what a soul-sucking existence my job can be (whoops!)
WHEN YOU'RE DEAD, ALL BETS ARE OFF
You often read (that is, I often read) about authors who say things like, "I was able to write truthfully about my mother only after she died," despite the possibility of Mom haunting you for eternity in the Great Beyond. Still, I understand the need to omit names and perhaps certain identifying characteristics of people, because:
  • I don't want to intentionally embarrass anyone
  • This is about me, primarily, not them
  • I am honestly not brave enough to face, and then tell, the complete truth
So, I'll be using fake names in most cases, meaning you'll read sentences like, "Then I slapped the table hard and said calmly to my buddy, Jim Smith, 'Jim, I know you're the first black President of the United States and all, but four-of-a-kind beats a full house. You won't ram though your weak cards like you did that nasty health program, JimSmithCare!"

HOW TO EVENTUALLY SIFT THROUGH THIS MESS
This is just the first post, so it's pretty easy to digest the whole thing. But as I continue and cover vastly disparate subjects, you might eventually want to read just my posts on food, not all those wonderful tales about what I like to call Facebook Regret, so I'll probably set up some categories, beyond the labels.

I MIGHT ASSAULT YOUR EARS IN ADDITION TO YOUR EYES, AND NOT JUST WITH THE RAP SONGS
Why annoy people with just one medium? I'm considering providing audio versions of my posts. They won't be straight readings of the text, since I'll probably ramble a bit as well, which is even easier to do in audio format than on the keyboard.

IN CONCLUSION
Good luck! We'll both need it!

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