A Rather Big Letdown; or, Nowhere to Go from Here but Up

So I have decided to start a blog.  Many readers may wonder why.  The author may then, in return, wonder why they are reading his blog (but will appreciate their reading of this blog regardless).  I have decided to begin a blog for a number of reasons:

1.  I am ridiculously bad at keeping in touch with people.  It just doesn't happen sometimes (by which I mean to say most of the time), and then, all of a sudden, there is an unending series of petitioners who wish to know how I am and what I'm doing and the all intricacies of my life.  This, I hope, will give them some sense of contentment, satisfaction, relief, or a combination of the three.  They ought to be warned, though, that they might just receive a double portion of my thoughts and hardly any happenings in my life. 

2.  I enjoy writing.  I like to think about and play with and experiment with the way in which words and sentences fit together and thoughts may be expressed.  In fact, I have been told that I should never stop writing, and I honestly have no intent to stop: I need only begin.  Maybe one day I will become a famous writer.  Maybe even win the Nobel Prize in literature.  But I'm not that good yet, and this project will either be the initial means of propelling myself towards that lofty dream, or it will be my consolation should I never make it quite that far.  Frankly, though, I wouldn't mind if it ended up somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.  For now, I will just pursue writing with the sentiment expressed by the beloved Teddy Roosevelt:

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell em, Certainly I can! - and get busy and find out how to do it.

Hopefully, as time rolls onward and these posts grow in number, they will become better and better.  Or maybe my idea of a good will incrementally sink and crumble as I discover the true difficulty of writing.  I would certainly prefer the latter. 

3.  I would like to be remembered.  I don't want that to sound arrogant or self centered, so maybe it would be better to rephrase it: I want to be able to remember myself; I want to create a record of my thoughts and musing that I and my posterity and all who wish to may see (I don't know why anyone else might want to, but maybe that will change in the unknowable future).  I think about things all the time, and I have discovered that I think about things differently from many--not that I think better, just differently.  When I confide my thoughts in others or share them aloud, decently often people appreciate them, and that is a pretty great feeling.  Maybe there are a few (maybe even more than a few) people out there who will appreciate my thinking, but, unless I voice my thoughts somehow, I will never know, and, if I don't thus voice them, all my thoughts will become lost and forgotten in the eventualities. 

Death comes to all But great achievements build a monument which shall endure until the sun grows cold. - George Fabricius

Maybe this will be the beginning of a vast, enduring monument.  Maybe it will be a single forgotten vase among ruins upon ruins, but I hope that whoever discovers it will treasure it dearly, however insignificant it may be. 

4.  Lastly, I have a couple of friends who have blogs, and, upon reading them, I decided that I ought to make one too.  It is a marvelous form of self expression where I need not be beholden to the opinions of any person--everything I write is piece of me, and those who do not want to read what I have to write simply won't.  The beautiful part is that nearly anyone in the world who does in fact wish to read these words of mine may do so. 

So this was my first post.  It was kind of like a mission statement, except that it had no clear goal.  It approached a sort of self-justification, except that nothing needed to be proved in the first place.  I simply explained to whoever it is that reads this thing a portion of how I think and why it is that I believe I want to write what I have written and am going to write.  I shared my thoughts and expressed my ideas.  One must wonder what a blog is for, if not for that. 

There is a chance that this will amount to hardly anything.  There is also a chance that it will amount to something, but then I will be forgotten.  This sonnet, which I love, by Percy Bysshe Shelley expresses an interesting sentiment along those lines. 

"Ozymandias"

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:

And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away 

All ought to consider, though, whether it may be considered a success to have risen and fallen and left a shattered monument in a desert wilderness, or to have never attempted to get that far at all due to a fear of failure.  

It is not rejection itself that people fear, it is the possible consequences of rejection.  Preparing to accept those consequences and viewing rejection as a learning experience that will bring you closer to success, will not only help you to conquer the fear of rejection, but help you to appreciate rejection itself. - Bo Bennett

I have nothing to fear from beginning or starting or attempting.  The floodgates of my individual experience and the expression thereof will be opened and the inky deluges of my thoughts will flow forth.  I may have said absolutely nothing, and the current reader might never return.  But all this does not matter, for there is nowhere to go from here but up.