The first post is always the most awkward. And, as far as I know, the hardest to write – although I wouldn’t really know, since I haven’t written anything besides the first post.
But I’ve procrastinated enough on writing down my thoughts. Like some people, I have managed to create a list of things to do when I grow up (I am not sure I know enough people to say whether most people write those kinds of lists or not) – and starting a blog was on that list. It had been a dream of mine for several years: to write a log of my thoughts and my random philosophy and stories and whatnot, and be able to eventually look back at it and see just what I’d managed to create.
Even so, I’d been waiting for years, waiting for some divine inspiration, or a burst of courage, or something to actually get me to stop thinking about writing and start writing. There was always some excuse for me not to start, and now that I am sitting here, typing out my initial thoughts, I’ve come to see just some of the reasons why I had waited for so long.
1. The Platform
I am a perfectionist, in perhaps too many ways. Aside from just writing the thing, I wanted the blog to look beautiful, to have a pretty web layout and typography and colors and everything. As a pixel artist and a designer, even the small things like 1-pixel borders could drive me nuts. Even more than that, however, I wanted my site to be mine – I was planning to create my own layout, make an entirely new theme – but I also wasn’t willing to (as of now, at least) pay for my own domain.
So I spent far too much time looking up themes on WordPress.com, trying to find the best-looking, most customizable one. It wasn’t until I had already made an account that I realized that customizing the CSS would cost money, too. So after that, I tried looking for the best looking theme that also wasn’t the most popular theme, and eventually gave that up too after suffering from severe indecision, before settling on Twenty Twelve. What can I say? It is pretty, and it is pretty minimal; nothing really stands in the way of the ideas.
I’m putting my perfectionism aside just to get some words down on the screen, and that’s okay for now; I’d waited too long to begin, after all. I mean, Twenty Twelve is a NICE theme, no doubt about it, very clean and smooth and with no distractions, but I was never satisfied because it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t very personalized, and didn’t speak about my identity very much.
Until I get some money, I guess I’ll have to live with this beautiful theme. Maybe it’ll grow on me, sooner or later; maybe it already has, seeing as I do think that it is rather beautiful.
2. What to write about
The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know what to write about. The problem was that I had far too much to write about, and yet I didn’t know whether I should write about any of those subjects.
On the one hand, I have flitted between far too many hobbies, and I have, in my spare time, picked up several programming languages, the language of web design and development, music composition, and Photoshop. I could have probably written a blog about any of those subjects, but that wasn’t really what I normally wrote about. When I wrote, it was always philosophy, storytelling, analysis…topics that I loved writing about but didn’t really know too much about.
In my most lucid moments, I wonder if I’m even qualified to write about any of the subjects I want to write about. I’ve lived for less than twenty years, and most of my knowledge comes from school, and the interactions in school. I don’t have half the life experiences as most people, yet here I am, trying to spout ideas and my knowledge as if I had. I write stories, and I never know if they’re real enough, realistic enough, as I haven’t seen enough of the world and I haven’t met enough people. I’ve done tons of research, certainly, but research is never the same as experiencing in reality. I am never sure if my thoughts consist of a complete view of the topics I write about, or if I’m still just ignorant to multiple facets of reality.
I had wanted to wait, wait until I had enough experience to be confident in what I am doing. But I had gotten tired of waiting, and so I gained my confidence – not out of actual experience, but just out of sheer anticipation.
After all, despite my hesitations, despite all of the misgivings, I had always just wanted to write. It was a fantasy of mine, to become a storyteller, to publish my thoughts out to the world. Everything that exists on this site is just a manifestation of that wish. And to that end, I decided what I wanted to write about.
I wanted to tell stories, both fiction and nonfiction. I wanted to let go of my thoughts and frustrations, which I had held onto countlessly without ever finding the words for them. I wanted to rant, I wanted to rave, I wanted to finally figure out just who I am. Everything I write is a pursuit of identity – that identity can be found in the writing, and can be a part of how writers define themselves. I wanted to be able to define myself through writing.
So here I am, trying to define myself.
But at the same time, I am also acting out another wish of mine through this writing: to get a cool pen name for if and when I actually make something that is worth talking about. I am writing by the name of Adam Lung; that is not my real name, in the sense that it is not the name that my peers call me, and it is not the name that appears on official documentation.
I am not Adam, yet at the same time, I am him. This is just where I put my thoughts, my rants and my thoughts and my ideas and my pursuits of identities and my stories and my words.
Ambient Maze 