What's It All About?

When I first conceived this blog, I didn’t know what to write. That may seem strange to you – why write a blog, if you don’t know what to write? Isn’t that putting your cart before your horse, so to speak?

I am an aspiring author, and a blog is the ‘done’ or expected thing for a writer actively looking for an agent or publisher. As it turns out, I’m not writing this blog for that reason. I started thinking about writing this blog for that reason.

I was resistant to the idea of writing a blog as part of a self-marketing exercise. What would I say? I had nothing I wanted to share with the world, no words of wisdom, no particular area of expertise (beyond the one I get paid for, that is, and I am not inspired to blog about my day job), and no particular interests to blog about. Besides writing, of course, and I knew early on that I did not want to blog about writing.

It’s simply not in me to expect people to read my words purely for the superficial reason of marketing myself if what I had to say was not also worthwhile on its own merits, and I could not for the life of me think of anything that was.

My resistance started to melt when I began to get the feeling that I did have something I wanted to share with the world. I didn’t know what it was, but I could feel it there, like a forgotten word, balanced on the tip of the tongue, refusing to be drawn forth from the vault of memory. It tantalised me with its formless substance. It was there, but could not be named.

As it took shape, I had certainty that, yes, this was something I could say. Doubts lingered. There were many things I wanted to say, but they didn’t appear to be on any one topic. Having an incredibly limited experience of blogs, was it appropriate to blog when one’s topic could not really be described? I suspected the answer was yes, but then what would I call it?

Searching, for inspiration or reassurance, I turned to Google. What were other people blogging about? I came across this webpage – 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/100-blog-topics-i-hope-you-write/). On the list was ‘Somebody Has To Say It.’

I leaned back in my chair, smiling. That was it. Someone who didn’t know me had somehow summed up in five words exactly what I wanted to blog about.

There are many things that could potentially fall into that category. As a general guide, I do not, at this time, intend to blog about the Big Three controversies (religion, politics, and sport, possibly not in that order). I am not here to shock, revolutionise, denigrate or insult. I get paid to argue in my day job, so I’m not here for that either. On a good day, I might hope to entertain.

No, this blog is for all those things I see that leave me shaking my head in disbelief, when I wonder what was that person thinking when they did that, and are you for real? The things that send me reaching for my phone to text a best friend to check that yes, it’s not just me that thinks that’s nuts, and I do have a passing relationship with normality.

So that it’s it. Somebody has to say it. And that somebody is me!