My first post...

Well, my first post and my first ever blog entry anywhere ever. How truly exciting. 

So, why a blog? Well, I find I can be a rather opinionated kind of person, and many of my opinions never get to see the light of day outside my head. So, I thought, why not start blogging? Maybe the whole blogging thing is a sign of arrogance...do I feel my opinions and thoughts are so important and worthwhile that I have to share them with the world? That's a tough one...I'll have to get back to you on that one.

Overall, I think this is just a nice way for me to flesh out some thoughts and expand on various things I have locked away in my head. Do I really think many people will read this? No. Do I care? Hmmm...a little I guess. I mean, first and foremost this a tool for me to get stuff off my chest and evolve what's in my head. But who wouldn't want lots of people to read their blogs? Realistically, if we didn't care, we wouldn't blog. I could just as easily type all this in MS Word and be done with it. So to all those people who say they don't care if people read their blogs...liar I say (I base this statement on no fact whatsoever. I have no idea if anyone has actually said that).

I was about to say that perhaps blogging is the modern day equivalent of keeping a diary, but i realised a couple of problems with that as soon as I thought of it. Firstly, I've never kept a diary. Well...I did briefly for about a month back in 2001, when my partner of the time had to leave the country to serve in the army back home. I was feeling so lost I had to do something, and I thought writing all my thoughts down might help (I actually typed...I'm not one for writing. If you saw my hand writing, you'd know why), and it actually did. Was wonderfully cathartic. I wrote copious amounts, and unfortunately managed to loose all I had written. OK....so after typing that, does that somehow mean I'm going through a crisis right now? Is this some sort of coping mechanism for me? Now I'm confusing myself...and digressing. I was talking about my theory of blogging being the modern-day diary. 

The second point in regards to this is that a diary is typically a personal thing that was kept private. I never knew of anyone who wrote in a diary and then passed it around for all to see. Blogs are intended to be public, diaries are not. So, I guess for blogging to be the modern day equivalent of keeping a diary, there would have to be many similarities, which is simply not the case. So after hypothesizing  the theory, I have to say it's wrong. Therefore, I would argue that blogs are an entirely new form of...not sure what to call it...communication perhaps? 

It's hard to explain exactly why I felt the need to blog. But I'll try anyway....

I think...a lot. Now, I know we all think, but I'm not talking about stuff like thinking about what to have for dinner. I'm talking deeper stuff, like say religion. I think about how people can believe something for which there is simply no evidence, and also how they can believe it so strongly that they can suspend all notions of normal human behavior  and commit horrible acts against other humans. So...simply put, writing all this stuff down helps me to understand it better. Writing clarifies thoughts, and enables these thoughts to develop. 

So really I guess this is predominately for my own benefit, and attempt to try and clarify and develop my own thoughts. And of course there is the hope that someone may come across this, have a read and give my ego a nice stroke in the process.