“So You’ve Started a Blog.”

By Brian • 2 January 2016

Hello. My name is Brian, and I am going to keep a blog in 2016. A real one. Not one that I only update twice a year to announce convention appearances (if that).

I registered this URL like three years ago with grand ambitions of a blog that would be known and loved by crazy internet people around the world. Originally, it was going to be a sports, pro wrestling, and video game blog. I designed a fancy themed layout and everything. After putting far too much work into the design, I feared my subject matter might be too broad, so I decided to just talk about pro wrestling and video games. I redesigned the site. Then I got pretty busy, so I decided maybe just video game talk was enough. Aaaaand I redesigned it again.

So, here we are, some three (or four) permutations later, and there finally appears to be some content here. Sports, wrestling, and video games are all going to come up somewhere along the line, but yup—it’s mostly just going to be me talking about myself and the stuff going on in my life. Please, don’t let me see how disappointed you are.

The purpose of this blog is twofold. First and foremost is accountability. I like to do creative things. I write, create comics, build or craft gifts and other odds and ends, draw, design graphics and websites, and so on, but it is easy to fall out of the habit. The last couple of years of my life have been astronomically busy, and when not busy, the siren songs of video games, Netflix, and the occasional night on the town are difficult to tone out. I can use this blog to document any current creative endeavors and, when time is short and I have to step away from a project for a lengthy amount of time, I can use it to keep my writing synapses(?) sharp. It’s a skill I have allowed to dull in recent years. I like to write. I went to college to learn how to write good (and learn how to do other things good, too). I need to write, already!

Secondly, I have come to the realization that I don’t tell anybody anything positive about myself ever. I’m quiet, uncertain, and self-deprecating by nature. I can talk all day long about all of the things I’ve screwed up and bad decisions I’ve made, things I don’t know how to do, or things I think I wouldn’t be good at. I have a lot of really great, interesting, caring, and admirable people in my life, and I feel utterly disconnected from just about all of them—even my own wife, from time to time. I’m not a great conversationalist in the first place, but I also just don’t let people know me. Friends that I have not seen for months or even years might ask me what’s new, and I will respond, “not much,” with no regard for the actual fifty thousand positive things that happened since we last spoke. It comes from a lack of confidence, the thought that my insights and experiences have no value, or that anything positive I could say about myself would constitute as boasting and be frowned upon, or that my opinions might be considered unreasonable or unacceptable. So, I bottle up instead. Geez, I don’t even like talking about things I enjoy or feel strongly about because there might be somebody out there who wants to argue about it—it’s easier to just assume I am wrong and weird and move on. It’s a quirk I am trying to break myself of, and I hope this blog can assist in that capacity. It’s not as direct of a conduit as an actual conversation, but I’d like to believe it might help me overcome some of my unusual social hang-ups. At least I’m not as bad as I used to be.

So, there it is. My first entry and mission statement. I do actually feel pretty good getting that out there—I actually wrote something for a change, and I told you something about myself that is not easy to discuss. Other than daring to grocery shop on a Saturday (or just getting out of bed on a Saturday, for that matter), those are my greatest accomplishments of the day!