This is it. I've found a new addiction. I've moved on from Halo (mainly because I gave up Xbox for Lent). Katy and I are still addicted to Carcassonne, but we can only play that 3 or 4 times a day. We are still addicted to Felicity (Sophomore Year), but if we don't pace ourselves, we will watch an entire season in less than two weeks.
Reading books is a hobby that has always been difficult for me; not because I can't read, but because I can't focus for the period of time it takes to read a chapter nor for the length of time it takes to finish a book. I can read close to 1/3 of a book in a short period of time, but if I set down the book for too long, finishing the book becomes a daunting task instead of an enjoyable pasttime. I have enough daunting tasks (thank-you's from wedding and wedding pictures from 7 months ago).
So, here I am.
I have to admit, this idea has been brewing off and on for the last 3.5 years. I'm not sure if I had seen High Fidelity yet, but I can specifically remember a conversation I had with my brother (www.inessentials.com) about putting together our own internet posting of Top 5 Lists. We would pick a topic on Monday and e-mail it out to friends (i.e. Top 5 Songs By Gospel Singers Turned R&B). By Wednesday, they would e-mail us back their lists, along with reasons for their choices (when reasons were needed) and any Honorable Mentions that needed to be stated (either because the person felt bad leaving them off the list, or because they needed to prove that they knew more possible answers than the five they gave). By Friday, we would post/e-mail everyone involved to give them the compiled list.
This, like all other genius ideas of two college men in huge transitions in life (one beginning his first college summer, one beginning his last), never came to fruition.
Shortly after, however, the less lazy of the two put together his own blog site. With no motivation to proceed on his own, the other waited . . . until now!
I guess that's not all. Maybe the fictional life of Felicity Porter is affecting the "real" life of Tom Yenter. Felicity tells her friend Sally, who lives in a hand-held tape recorder, everything she is thinking. It's like hearing her thoughts, but more realistic. I mean, really, isn't it more believable that Felicity would send candid thoughts by mail to her distant French tutor than for the audience, who can already see everything going on, to hear everything that is going on.
Enough nonsense. At least for one blog. Now I can spread nonsense throughout the world with my blogs. The world is my burrito.
Which no further ado, my first Top 5 List:
Top 5 reasons to have a blog -
5. You have no hobbies besides video games, Carcassonne, Felicity, and other fictional worlds.
4. You have very few friends with whom you can hang out on any type of regular basis, besides your beautiful wife.
3. All the cool people are doing it.
2. In a conversation, you only tell the other person what you think A) is important and 2) is of any interest to them. In a blog, either you have something that is so important that you think everyone and their address book should hear what you have to say (and you realize that even you don't forward the chain-letter e-mails about little Billy needing a liver transplant that he can only get if you e-mail everyone you know about it) or you realize that it is not important enough to actually tell someone during a real life conversation. In the latter case, it doesn't matter if it is of interest to them. All that matters is that you said what you wanted to say, whether anyone cares or not.
1. Blogs are the new e-mail. Instead of e-mailing people useless information until they block your e-mail address, they can now choose when and what they read that you feel was important enough to take up your time and electricity to share with others.
Hopefully, my future blogs will make me, and other bloggers, sound less pathetic than we can tend to be. (Look, this is only my first blog and I'm already including myself into the community of bloggers. I feel at home already in the infinite cyberspace that Al Gore invented)
Please leave comments so I can figure out how those work.
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4 comments:
I figured that the first person to post a comment should probably be me (and by me, I mean Tom's wife). Tom had been working on setting it up, and after awhile said he wanted me to come and look at the first blog ever. Instead of looking at it and then telling him what I thought, it seemed to make far more sense to use the internet to share my thoughts. Since we get to spend 95% of the day's moments working together and hanging out, I thought that maybe we should work on new forms of communnication wherein the whole world (at least those who wish to chose this blog) could view the conversation (not much different than living in an apartment or working at a church, but this way I get to type . . .)
But in response to the first blog, I enjoyed it. Way to go, Tom!
We need to go watch Felicity now. Our Carcassonne time was intruded upon by this blog, but at least we can salvage hobby B (the life of Felicity Porter) before the evening is over.
My motivation for blogging is to give myself an opportunity to practice writing something other than work emails and other technical jibberish.
Amen to that, Leif! Reprieve.
You're off to a good start! Welcome to blogging.
I blog for a few reasons, too. I enjoy writing, and stretching that ability. I enjoy the wide-open nature of the Internet and the ability to do anything I want with the space I have. I enjoy the comments and input from friends and strangers. But maybe more than any of those, I enjoy the chance my blog gives me to design a website, and keep changing it and trying new things without having to ask a customer if it's what they wanted. And I can leave the page half-done, and the only person who is really critical of that decision is me.
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