Fighting Problems with Bigger Problems: An Introduction

Hello, Reader. This is a blog. I know all too well how awkward introductions can sometimes be, so I’ll try to make this as painless as possible.

Reader, meet blog. Blog, reader.

There, now that we’re superficially acquainted and had the requisite firm handshake, we can get down to the ‘deep’ stuff. This blog has arisen from the charred remains of another blog, which died sometime in 2008 but has been exhumed infrequently since that time, usually just to post year-end album lists. While alive, the blog served its purpose as an outlet for navel-gazing and quizzical thoughts, but it eventually grew stale. I felt this new effort warranted a fresh start and an opportunity to form new first impressions.

The purpose of this blog is no more complex than to give me a public venue to write, which I’ve been doing on the daily for the last few years, resulting in numerous folders on my perpetually dying laptop’s hard drive, as well as mounds of frayed notebooks buried underneath dirty laundry in my closet. Writing has always been an escape for me, a cave of solace where I could get away from school and problems and people and the demands of living life in contemporary society. There, I could order the universe and paint antlered beasts on clay walls without judgment, without having to expose them to the light of day. But I’ve come to see that writing only for the drawer amounts to very little in the end. Eventually one must move from the shadows of the cave and create forms. Eventually one must expose them to light to see what they’re all about.

My intent for this blog is merely to provide an examination and analysis of the things that make the world interesting—ranging from music, sports, and popular culture to politics and big ‘life’ questions. These topics will be covered in a thoughtful, serious/not serious manner that should provide greater illumination than a 140-character thesis could. This concept will be centered on the interaction between the individual and the outside world, so it will contain a mix of first-person perspective and more objective evaluation. Clearly this isn’t a lot to go on, but hopefully it will all work out in the end. I plan to incorporate contributions from some of my talented friends on this blog, since several voices will be significantly more engaging than just my own. I cannot say with certainty how often new items will be posted, but expect them to appear more frequently than once a month but less frequently than once a day.

It may take a while for my eyes to adjust to the light, but hopefully in time these crude cave drawings will transform into something worth seeing.