beginnings.

As a self-proclaimed writer, I will admit that I’m feeling a certain amount of pressure to set the perfect tone with this obligatory first blog post. I’ve never written a book, but I can imagine it’s somewhat like coming up with your first few sentences. A good (or bad) first sentence doesn’t usually make or break a book, but it certainly can’t hurt. I guess only time will tell if I end up achieving the former or the latter, and that’s actually a bit of relief.

I hope we can all acknowledge that putting words to paper (or screen, as the case may be) is a little scary. I know it probably shouldn’t be, especially given the fact that this time we live in has desensitized us to it in many ways; it’s no secret that a large part of our day now revolves around updating the world on every minute aspect of our existence. Our lives are documented to a rather freakish extent, and I think we can all get a taste of that if we look hard enough (see: Facebook Timeline–did we really need reminding of our college freshman year antics, Facebook? I think not.)

When the printing press was first invented, the only book available was The Bible, and not widely so. Today, evidence suggests that around 130 million books have been published in all of modern history–and that’s not counting the millions of blog posts and status updates that get churned out on a daily basis. In this age of modern citizen journalism (thanks J-School education!), anyone can be a technically published author if they can navigate the Internet and a computer keyboard. Of course, I’ll include myself in this, as I have no delusions of grandeur about my writing abilities. I may care about sounding funny or clever or intelligent or whatever else, but the truth is, I am usually none of these things. And yet, here I am, pushing through one of my bigger insecurities because I know it’s good for me, and I know I’ll be glad I did.

The topic of this blog is yet to be decided, but I’m sure it will involve lots of ramblings about my life and faith and feelings about things like e-books and Carolina basketball and TV shows. There’s really no telling. I do recognize that I’m a little late in hopping on the blogging bandwagon or what have you, but I’ll credit my current unemployment for a recent quasi-quarter-life crisis and the impetus to do things I should have done a long time ago. Looking on the bright side here, people. : )

Feel free to leave comments and links to your blog, if you have one; I’d love to follow them if I’m not already! And because I’m not really sure what the protocol is for ending these things, and this sort of feels like trying to wrap up a phone conversation that’s been going on for way too long, I’ll just finish with a nice quote from Ms. Sylvia Plath.

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Hannah