Prologue

The idea of Writing A Blog has long been at the back of my mind.

The attraction is both personal and public; part confessional, part sermon.

In my 20s, I kept a diary for a couple of years or so, in the period after I graduated when I was traveling a lot, and wanted a record of the places and people, and the things that I'd done: a simple aide-memoire, that spoke to my fear of losing the memory.

Re-reading it now, however, it's clear that the more interesting (and more enduring) elements of the exercise were the insight it gives into both my emotional state at the time (a kind of emotional barometer) - and my rationalisation of how the two components (what I was doing and how I was feeling) worked together... in essence providing the reference point for Where I Was At.

So, I guess the key difference for diary vs blog comes down to two things: audience and objective.

This blog needs an audience. Firstly, I want to avoid the tendency for navel-gazing that could afflict a simple diary. I'm not sure I have any sense of who that audience could (or should) be for this blog...but as a way of moderating and curating my thoughts, I think a sense of audience is important. So, in a Brontë-esque way ("Dear Reader"), my first intent is to make this as personal and conversational as possible. Hopefully, that way it'll be readable too...

And the objective. Well, I'm going to aim for the intersection of doing and feeling - and in the process, I hope to be able to draw out something more, that gets to the heart of Where I Am At - but that also translates to something that You, Dear Reader, will actually want to bloody well read.

Here, in hope, we go!