The Beginning to a Blog

So here I am. But exactly why I'm here, I'm not sure. I suppose I have been planning to visit this place for a while. The itinerary has been ricocheting around in my mind for a bit now. I guess I decided to snatch it down today because... well, because right now I have quite a bit of writing to commit. Getting started is always the hardest part, not to sound didactic, of course. But that is why I am here in this moment, and not in a past time- to get started.

I think I have always figured I might wait for a lasso made of hardened purpose to arrive at my feet before I were to start a blog. As I am finding out, however, that life never really goes as planned, I am becoming more comfortable with unexpected detours. Though they still are frustrating. Much is.

So, why a blog, I ask? Why do I not just open a new word doc and fly my fingers across the keys to warm up, as I usually do? That is a good question. I think the answer involves the material I am about to write. When I open a document to "get started," as I seem to be calling the exercise I do to enter the mode of finessed writing, I am typically preparing to write a piece few will read. The mental mode needed to conjure appropriate phrasing and thoughts for a limited audience is different than the mode required for a larger audience, which is an audience for which I have never really written. With a new audience comes a new set of censors for new thoughts and ways of phrasing which keep in mind the wider audience. And a different mental mode that keeps in mind a wider audience requires a new method of entrance the bears in mind more readers: a blog post. Hence, because I am preparing to write pieces for a daily newspaper, a monthly magazine, and an academic journal, this is the beginning to a mode to finessed writing, a wider, if not less aware, audience, and a blog.