From Journal to Blog - the Leap

I've put off starting this for way too long, wondering "Should my person journal become a public blog?" The answer is "Yes". If blogs had existed when I was young I'd have done had one with no hesitation. I'd have loved it with all the enthusiasm of youth's obscurity and urge to be known, recognized, reacted to. But after all this time to become public with my thoughts and personal writings? This far into adulthood, and with much public creative work behind me, I have the hesitation of one often quite overcome with reactions from others. These reactions, though usually positive and often quite interesting, not only absorb considerable time, they tie me to to the past, cycling me into reacting to reactions to past thoughts and works, when I want to be free to go forward to the new and the next.

So this blog is inherently self-contradictory. It's a new output channel that puts me at risk of more time spent on reactions to past output, both to comments on my previous non-blog output and to old entries among the accumulation of past blog entries that will inevitably built up here.

I am already not keeping up with my email so will state right up front that although I may respond to responses here from time to time, I will not in general try keep up a practice of doing so. I will enjoy reading your comments from you, if and when they occur. But my main intent is to bring my thoughts, ideas, observations, etc. into the light of this public way to write instead of their merely being stored in a dark private place, to be forgotten once written and perhaps never read, so that they can live their own lives, grow and sew seeds in other people's minds, intermingle with other ideas, and inhabit the world on their own.

I will seed this new blog right away with a smattering of my thought on this and that right away, to see how they fly and if responses come in. I am finding myself pleased with this breakthrough from private to public, and look forward to seeing your comments as well as posting my own.