A Fresh Start

I've always wondered what journal writing and blogging was all about. I mean, what is the point? Who really cares what one person out of 6.6 billion in the world thinks? How much can you really record your innermost feelings if some snoopy person could later find it under your mattress, or worse, when you're sharing it with a whole world wide web of people? What should you write about? Do seemingly insignificant everyday things deserve a mention or should there just be one topic a writer focuses on? I guess it's questions like these that have always made me want to start a journal/blog - to try to answer them. Not just these questions, but all the crazy, perplexing, weird, philisophical, or just plain curiousity-driven questions that pop into my head.

I can see the beauty of recording things in real time: to see what one really thought or felt without the bias of 20/20 hindsight. But, I've always encountered the problem of keeping up with a journal. Mostly, I think it just takes too long to write things down and my handwriting has never been great. So, I thought maybe blogging would remedy some of these problems (after all typing is certainly a lot faster and there's spellcheck :)). And since we're in a new year, 2008, (and for various other reasons) I thought there was no better time than now to start out on this endeavour.

I think what I've come to realize is that these sorts of diaries are more for yourself than for anyone else. It's a place where you can record your ideas, sort through decisions and vent on troubling issues. I've often resorted to them as a crutch in life when in troubling and uncertain times - when I felt I had no one to talk to, when I was angry with my friends, when I was at crossroads in life. Most of all, though, I created this blog to record my adventures (what little is left of them at least) in Europe and perhaps have a way to easily share more detailed descriptions and photos with friends and family. Also, I've realized I'm a very hyper person - whether it be a form of ADHD or just a restless curiousity about things, I'm constantly working on different projects and hobbies or finding new and interesting things to read about or discuss and I have yet to find someone to really keep up with me in these interests - I myself can't really keep up with all of them, hence the projects I have dubbed "life-long" for the fact they have been under construction for so long and have no real end in site.

That said, I wish I could post a backlog of trips, but I'm not sure I will be able to keep up with this new chore and get up to speed at the same time. One step at a time but something to hope for.