On Bloggng; My first post

Seeing as how this is my first attempt at creating a blog, why not make it the subject?  I like starting with a question, because I have a feeling that’s going to be the recurring theme throughout.   Don’t count that as a promise.  But expect more questions than answers.  Because let’s be honest, there are, by ratio in the universe, far more questions than answers, right? 

 

Firstly, I suppose we could begin with an introduction.   I’m a middle-aged dad with three kids and a beautiful wife in the suburbs of Chicago.  I’m a soccer coach.  What do I have to complain about?  Well, this leads me to my first impression of blogging.  I always assumed the medium consisted of people complaining or ranting and raving about their opinions.  Who really cares?  But my friend, who is way more tech savvy than I am, called me one day with the specific suggestion that I start my own blog.  I blanch at the idea of self promotion.  It makes me uncomfortable.   And I’m not really technically confident I’d know how to even start.  He gets really pissed off when he remembers that I don’t have a Mac and that I still use iTunes for all my musical needs.  I secretly enjoy that my ignorance of the web irritates him, I don’t know why.  It sort of turns into a comedy bit between us, that I find hilarious.  I have similar, but much more complicated bits always running with my wife as well, with wildly varying degrees of humor.  But the point is, he gets really angry that I don’t even begin to understand what a blog is and what it is for.   This is where the joke can go too far perhaps.  Though the joke comes from truth, in that, I have a tendency to ignore the larger, louder world out there for ponderings more internally directed.  I don’t follow celebrities.  The nightly news is farce in my opinion, though I do tend to put CNN on in the mornings just to make sure the world didn’t end yet.  I think we all do that now.  “Better put on the CNN.” That should be their motto.  “Did the world end last night?  Better turn us on and find out!  CNN.”

I’d say we’re now to that point where anything’s possible.  We like bigger and better and the world just keeps producing it for us right on cue.  They have us prepped and ready for everything from zombies to aliens.  I’m just hoping the aliens aren’t zombies, then we’re all screwed for sure.   I’m not old enough to remember, but I wonder if this feeling persisted in the early sixties as well; this feeling like Times They Are a Changin’?   Mr. Bob Dylan felt it.   Shit’s about to get weird.

But contradicting myself, I do love what’s happening in the worlds of technology and science.  I marvel at how we’re living in a sci-fi movie.   I just feel like I’m watching it all happen, though, I forget that I’m here actually to interact with this stuff.  I’m here at this moment and have access to what is offered.  There’s a place for me out there in the cloud.  Why not?   And so I decided to see if I could write a blog. 

Self promotion feels so vain though, doesn’t it?  That’s one of the endless problems with having so many people crammed on this rock at the same time.  There’s a lot of noise and people scrambling to be heard over the din.  And not everyone has something good and interesting to say.  It goes against my normal personality to care to shout over them.  What makes me so vainglorious to think I have anything to say?  Forgive me, self-doubt is unattractive, I know.   But I spoke with another friend about it later that day and he too seemed as adamant as my first friend that a blog is exactly what I should be doing.   I began to think differently about blogging and the possibilities of it.  I could do it if I thought it didn’t matter how many people read it or followed it or whatever the terminology.  I would approach it as I would any other artistic endeavor.  I’d do it for myself.   So here’s the result of that internal tug of war.  My first blog.