In medias res

Wherever you begin something, there will always be something else that comes before it. This seems especially true of a blog. You live your life, meeting people and learning things and doing things, developing a catalogue of plots and subplots along the way—and then suddenly you decide to start a blog, right smack-dab in the middle of all those storylines before any of them are finished and without giving a reader any chance to catch up. The situation looks something like this: life life life life blog! life life life. And there's no other way to do it. A blog of necessity begins in medias res—which means, as I conveniently learned in freshman humanities, in the middle of things. That's not a bad place to start a story. It lets you jump in on the action and catch up on the backstory later. It's rather like dropping you down on a path feet-first and running. As far as this blog goes, I might fill in bits that have gone before; I might not. Actually, it's quite probable that I'll post thoughts and poems sporadically and leave the narrative bits out.

I have blogged before: in a joint-project family blog, of which I am still a part and at which I still intend to post. More and more in the last few months, however, I've been thinking that I need a place to put down loose thoughts: ideas which aren't fleshed out enough to be finished projects, but are well worth saving; perhaps worth sharing, too. I also sometimes need a place to journal where I'm comfortable posting more random me-related stuff than I would on the family blog. (Not gratuitous personal details, mind you, but remarks upon little things that happen. And big things too, sometimes.) I also hope that having my own blog will stimulate me to write more. I like to think of myself as someone who writes, but for some reason I have a problem with the whole "writing" bit of being a writer. Having my own special place on the internet beckoning me to fill it with words might help. So: here I am, in the middle of things—but writing about them now. At least, that's the idea. If you want to read along, I'd be more than happy to have company along the way!