Beginnings

Beginnings are always difficult.

I find it difficult to know how to start off this blog. It takes a bit of courage to make the first mark on a piece of fresh white paper, a bit of daring to throw that pebble into the glassy pond and disturb the water.

I know (sort of) what I will be using it to think about, but I find it difficult to just jump in.
I've been feeling quite pensive and introspective lately, contemplative, and that doesn't make it easier to write "Post Number One."  Contemplation makes me feel I should be profound, but I have nothing really to be profound about, which makes it mere posturing, which I don't think is attractive.

I value honesty, but at the same time don't want to be sharing too much. I'm a private sort of person and while I'd like to share my ideas and and writings and interests, it is quite scary to expose them to the scrutiny and whims of others, even in the relative anonymity of the internet. I share only carefully selected and edited snippets of me, but they are still me. And "me" is a hodge-podge of insecurities and foibles and endless searching for identity.

I could keep a blog of "things", while still never really giving an accurate or even panoramic view of who I am. I could say I am a writer, a sister, a daughter, a teacher, a learner, a singer--oh, any number of titles and skills and states of being, but none of these will truly tell you who I am. I can tell you my age, weight, and shoe size, but you won't have any true understanding of what makes me tick.

It is easy to put on a persona, but not so easy to be real. Being real is scary, is messy, is very, very hard.

I can't promise to always be real on this blog or even to always be completely frank, but I'll try to share a bit of the hope that I've found, the anchor of my soul in all of the rough seas and the tedious doldrums that being real entails.