El Burro Volador

I have said before that blogging exemplifies our society’s increasing tendency toward narcissism and navel-gazing, so why am I starting a blog?  The last time I started one, the answer was simple: narcissism!  I wanted everyone to know how awesome I was.  I’d like to think that my motives are a little more complicated this time around, a little more mature, if you will.

I guess that the blog bug bit me when I started reading the blogs of other people I knew – namely Sarah, Dylan and Jon.  I guess I’m a pretty distant person in a lot of ways, and when I read Sarah and Dylan’s blogs, I felt like I got so much closer to them – that I understood a bit more about their daily lives, what they were worried about, what they looked forward too, etc.  Also, since I was catching up on two or three years worth of blogging all at once, I really got to appreciate how over time a blog, just like a journal, becomes a record of one’s experience.

Jon’s blog was influential in a couple of ways.  First of all, I laughed really hard when I read his blog.  Second, during one of his early posts, he articulates many of my feelings about the desperate and sad nature of many blogs.  In doing so, however, he showcased some of his range as a writer (Believe me, y’all – Jon has chops, and we haven’t yet seen what he is truly capable of achieving).  It made me nostalgic for the time in my life when I had to use my writing skills, and I thought a blog might also serve as an outlet for all my pent-up language.

So this place will serve as a journal, yes, and a way to share a bit more of my inner life with my friends and family – a way to eat up the distance between us, perhaps – but it will also serve as a place for me to write, write , write and keep my skills from atrophying.  I am already hoping to produce some fiction or poetry or a worthy essay in this space several times a year; if nothing else it will spice up the typical blog mixture of epistles and rants.