Greetings, Journeyman, Journeywoman, and/or Journeyother, whoever you may be.
On a cold, dim, quiet day, this 28th of January, 2012, I created a blog, but until a matter of moments ago, I didn't really know why. Perhaps I felt bored with my previous writing outlets. Perhaps I didn't feel like they were really outlets at all. Perhaps I was drawn to the idea of a fresh, new, shiny beginning - like a blank page patiently waiting for the first pen prick of ink. Maybe I had listened to the advice of friends and professionals and realised that a web presence is a must if you want anyone to pay any attention to anything you do. Maybe I wanted to compile and rebrand the messy, fraying threads of my past ventures into some recognisable, and yet all-together uniquely different, whole. Maybe I just wanted a little corner in a little box of a big room in a big house to call my own, somewhere secret, all to myself and the rest of the world.
I intend to explore all these options, and I won't deny that they are all true, but, as it turns out, the reason I made this blog is far simpler than any of them. You see, dear stranger, wayward traveller, explorer and wanderer of virtual seas: I felt like it; and, as it turns out, feeling like something - a writer, a musician, an architect, an artisan, a creator, a blogger - is a vital part of becoming that thing. If you can fool yourself into pretending long enough, you might just accidentally become your disguise.
I wear a lot of disguises, though they may often look similar. Yesterday, I felt like dedicating three hours of my time to being hunched over a laptop keyboard, desperately pleading with an uncompromising sentence to organise itself in a fashion half-respectable. A week ago, you may have found me - if you had been so bold to appear in my bedroom uninvited - struggling to find the missing sixth of the final chord of the verse progression of the song I was composing. Recently, I've felt like collaborating with others to write a tabletop RPG from scratch. It was the desire to try my hand at article writing that recently inspired the instigation of a collaborative editorial project on Facebook. I've dabbled with online video, bustled through the hectic streets of public journals, taken to the stage, and taken to the page, and all because, at the time, I felt like it.
Right now, I feel like blogging, and so, whatever it is that I am inspired to create here, I will become that creator, the blogger, to do so. I must wear that disguise. Some may consider this a capriciousness practice, for what use is a pair of hands that flit from one half-made object to another? What use is an 'I' that does not know how to be one thing? But it is not fickleness that leads the wayward traveller. It is feeling. Like a fuel, it drives you on, turning thought into idea, and idea into form - form into shape, and shape into substance. And every new venture and every new idea comes with its own feeling, strong and undeniable.
The beginning of all things is with a step. So we must all set sail. We must, or never take the voyage at all.
But I will return to my song when the feeling takes me again, and I shall spend yet more hours on that uncooperative sentence, and bit by bit, these objects will verge towards completion, as, bit by bit, new ones join them.
This blog is a map, and, like a dotted line, I will mark out the uneasy steps towards making manifest my imagination. Here I will muse on the making of things.
Into the blogosphere - that inimitable cacophony of voices - I set sail, nurtured by the voices of all those creators who have sent their work out into the world, like ships onto the sea, hoping one day to sail them home1.
1. Yes, that is a rephrasing of Danny DeVito's voice-over narration during the library scene in his adaptation of Roald Dahl's Matilda. I'm glad you noticed.
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