So I'm Blogging.

So I've decided to start a blog today and I think I'm going to keep it up. As I was pulling weeds today to make space for my new home (tent) I thought a lot about why it is I want to blog. I've never blogged before. I've never been much of a "facebook status" person, I tried to tweet a few times but it always felt a little awkward. I journaled once, actually for a whole year, every day, but that was because I got done reading a book that was actually a journal of the authors summer between his junior and senior year and since I needed a new years resolution, I made a pact with Roney that we'd keep a journal for our whole Sophmore year of college. But a journal is different than a blog with the key difference being that you don't journal so that everyone you know can read it.

So I came up with these reasons on why I'm going to Blog.

1.) There are some people who seem to express a genuine interest in what I'm doing with my life after college. The blog will act to keep everyone updated. Obvious reason.

2.) I've always felt that when you make something public, or even write things down, it makes it seem more real and forces you to analyze your actions and decisions more than if you didn't. This is because our minds have a HUGE bag of tricks it uses to try and make us feel alright with everything. Obviously it doesn't always work but go with me. In a way a feel that by blogging my happenings, it'll keep me focused/moving forward or something like that.

3.) I miss Iowa and I miss home. I'm going to for a long time. We live in kind of a weird world now that it makes it possible to never really lose touch with anyone. This is partly due to Mark Zuckerberg (facebook). I am a bit obsessed with the Facebook phenomenon. Not meaning I spend lots of time on it or any of that, but I think it's fascinating how one website and totally change so many social aspects in our culture. In Pre-Facebook times, we'd leave college or home and we'd leave most of those people behind. We wouldn't write thousands of letters to everyone, and we surely wouldn't be checking out photos of all our significant and insignificant companions. We'd leave, and eventually those people wouldn't be on our radar anymore. But now, we leave but we get little 160 word blurbs about what all our friends are up to, which causes us to think about them, which causes us to realize that we're not really in that community anymore, which causes us to miss them. BUT, with blogging, it becomes a two way street, so we stay connected in a sort of digital way. This helps the missing thing because one of the many things friends are for is to listen to your stories and thoughts. So here are my thoughts.

4.) It's fun. Writing forces you to think and to analyze and brings up lots of new thoughts. It's like I'm giving my brain a workout, which it needs now that it's not in academia anymore.

5.) I want to go into a career that doesn't involve writing much of anything. I think writing is important and I don't want to get to be 50 and write like I was in junior high.

6.) Via Facebook today I saw that my friend Anna was blogging about her post grad life in China. Her blog looks good and it's what gave me the idea in the first place.

That's all the reasons I've got for now. I actually thought of more while writing this but this is probably already too long to keep most peoples interest, besides perhaps my mother (thanks Mom).

From here this blog will be about whatever it is I'm doing or thinking. It will likely contain lots about biking and food, my two obsessions, but there will be lots of other stuff too.

Peace. Go have fun.