Why?

Why start a blog?

First, the short answers: To unload. It is fun. So my friends can see how I am doing.

Things get lost. My memory is especially untrustworthy, and no matter how many times I hear someone say that "it's all still up there" in my head, I do not become more hopeful. Thick tracts of my experience are lost to the vagaries of recall. Memory is not a file cabinet of snap shots. It is a pile of sketches, mildewing in the attics of houses, scattered on the streets of a dark city. Recall is a compass without a map. I think senior year is north a few blocks...

Hence, the first reason for "unloading." Otherwise, memories will never get out of the dark city in my head.

The second reason, perhaps the more important one, is to commune with you, my reader. I do not know who you are, but I will assume you are a friend. Even if the only reader is my future self, there is something of an element of communion there. Paradoxically, the idea of no one is somehow similar to the idea of everyone. Dear readers, you are everyone.

There is another paradox here. This telling, so ego heavy: today I looked at myself in the mirror and was so glad at what I saw...The exploration of how I feel about things, about what I did all day, about what I think is pretty, what bands I like, is an indulgence. Yet, it seems like such a grounding effort, a labor even, that satisfies some moral requirement. Strike down on this digital tombstone an epitaph, thousands of lines long...

Then there is a more selfless reason for blogging. I want to share the beautiful things that fly at me each day, so fast and fleeting...how, somehow, a song is perfect. Right now, for example, Paul Simon appears on shuffle and I am reminded of how long music has gone on and it was only a second ago when my cousins and I danced to my mother's copy of Graceland and in a few more seconds my post-apocalyptic grand nephew will listen to it again. The song that triggered this digression, by the way, is "Obvious Child" from The Rhythm of the Saints.

Then there are other things I want to share, that are not beautiful, bad shit that happens. I work as a lobbyist for public college students in Washington state. I work as a writing tutor at Evergreen college as well. My growing awareness of political realities is a constant source of rumination for me. The big question, the great problem, for me, is how do I act politically. Even inaction has political repercussions, so I would like to be as intentional as possible. Acting politically does not just mean participating in my caucus or writing a letter to my legislator, it infiltrates every action of my life, and yours. I am beginning to ramble about this. I have few answers. As a reason for blogging, a big question is a good one.

Life seems to move faster than ever. Events of significance pile up each day by the hundreds.
In this blog, I hope, I will preserve, uncover, share, and solidify the significance that I float through each day: the beautiful things, the problems, the ways of seeing, asking, answering, hearing and rocking out.