“Be like the rocky headland on which the waves constantly break. It stands firm, and round it the seething waters are laid to rest.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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I don’t know anything about blogging.
There you go. I will wait a few seconds while you consider whether to continue reading or go do something more life changing, like, fold your laundry.
I tell you this because I spent an inordinate amount of time wondering what to say. Because this blog post, the FIRST blog post, has to be IMPORTANT. Opening line of a novel important. This is supposed to be my mission statement.
Want to know what this blog is about? Read the first post. Want to know who the blogger is and what he’s about? Read the first post. Want to be certain to not miss any of the pearls of wisdom I might leave amidst all this dreck? Yea.
So I wanted this post to say something important. Maybe the next post I will talk about how much I loved Ready Player One. Or how much Bay Area sports fans suck.
But this one MATTERS.
And there I go down the rabbit hole.
“Matters” presupposes that what I say will affect someone. Or anyone. If I make such a presumption, do I then inflate my own importance? Does writing this first post become about my ego? Is anyone really interested in reading a blog about the blogger’s own life? To assume that the myriad musings of my meandering mind matters is madness.
However, if I were to then determine that what I say does not matter to a soul, does that not remove the very purpose for which I am writing this blog? Ergo, why blog at all?
This gets to my purpose, of course. I believe humanity has somewhat lost its way. Or I am discovering that in the entirety of its existence, humankind has always been adrift, and finally, after thousands of generations of evolutionary development of both our mental and social capacities, one such as I has finally come along to show the species its proper course. Rather fortunate that I happen to live in an age where I can communicate with the entire world electronically.
There I go again, putting myself on a pedestal.
I must blog. I have a message to share. This is why I am here.
The effect of that message on others matters not. Only the fact that it must be shared.
I have limited control over what influence my blog can have, and in the torrential virtual river that is the Internet, one of my blog posts is akin to a leaf falling into the water, only to be zipped away before its import can truly be assessed. By the soft blue light of our phones and tablets, our collective attention span has shrunk to as short a time as it takes for a web page to load up.
Thusly, the world will not take notice of my message. My blog won’t change anything for anyone.
Except for maybe one person. Myself.
Therefore, I write for an audience of one. And if someone should glance upon it happenstance and glean from it something of more than passing importance, then so much the better.
Of course, by now you have forgotten that I opened this blog post with a quote from Marcus Aurelius. And you’re asking yourself, what the fuck was that about?
It’s about putting up a blog post.
Finally.