When I Grow Up...

It occurred to me the other day, that there are little kids in the world right now who are dreaming about what they'll be when they grow up. And some of them are surely dreaming about becoming something that didn't exist when I was a kid. Blogger.

As far as I knew, the internet didn't even exist when I was old enough to fathom that I would "grow up", and neither did the "weblog", which would later become the "blog". When I was a kid, the closest thing that we had to what is now known as a blogger, was a writer. And that was what I wanted to be.

For fun, I bought composition books and filled them with stories about my friends and me, and I changed their names from things like Lisa and Erica to Linda and Monica. I never finished them. I always just wrote a page or two and gave up or started a new story that had wormed its way into my brain. Sometimes, I'd notice things that happened around me or on TV, and I'd write just a sentence or two. This went on for years and years, until I grew up just a little and came to believe that it was a silly pipedream to want to be a writer. After all, writing was hard work. I'd have to finish something someday, which was something I couldn't even fathom, and then I'd have to deal with the elusive concept of "getting published". Again, since this was all pre-internet, I had no clue at all what that entailed.

When the internet finally really showed up on the scene, I was in high school. It had recently become commonplace to have an e-mail address, and it wasn't until college that I discovered this "blog" thing. It was still relatively new in 2003 or so, when I was a sophomore in college. I started my first blog right here on Blogger, with absolutely no concept of how to really use it. I thought it was pretty much just a journal that anyone who finds it could read. I wrote and published, under the assumption that no one would actually find it. And no one did. It never occurred to me that I might actually need to have the thing that was drilled into my brain over and over in all my English classes. Purpose.

Just now, right now as I wrote this, I realized something important. I have been blogging since I was a kid, when I wrote those neverending stories in my notebooks. I've been microblogging, too. When Twitter was just a gleam in the eye of it's creators, I tweeted in the margins of my algebra notes. I always thought of inability to finish a damn thing I started as a hindrance, but now, in this new world of social media and self publishing where the blog is king, this may actually be a GOOD thing. What is a blog, really, except a neverending story? And I may have just found my purpose.

I'll tell it.

I meant for this entry, the cornerstone for all I will write here, to be much more funny and clever, but I guess when I get on the subject of hopes and dreams, especially my own, I get a little heavy, to say the least. I promise I am much more entertaining than this. I see some of the funniest nonsense every day that could bring on giggle attacks. I have kind of a wacky, wonderful life full of characters that the world will enjoy getting to know. I owe it to myself to tell you about it. If you enjoy reading it, great. If not, I guess that is your prerogative.

Stephen King defines a writer in very simple terms. In "On Writing", he says that if you write, you are a writer. So, I guess that makes me a writer. So, dear reader, would you like to take a walk with me?