Finding my "blogging voice."

So I sat down to start this blog, and I happened to be listening to a Johnny Cash shuffle in the background. My wife - the founder of Type B&B - was lounging beside me. Suddenly, she felt the need to alert me to the fact that she thinks the current song "is a turd." I quickly glanced at her, and flashed her a now-familar eye roll, before returning to the blank screen and the silent keyboard. Between JC crooning "I focus on the pain" and "that old familiar sting" I began wondering what I'm supposed to be saying here - you know, now that I'm up on this electronic-soapbox-stage. As I stared into space, darling wife followed up her incisive music critique with, "Don't worry, it'll take you awhile to find your blogging voice." Immediately, she spoke truth to my internal struggle.

She was absolutely right. I do "technical writing" all the time for a living...but this personal, put-myself-out-there style is something entirely foreign. Besides an occasional (but often verbose) email to a friend, or a rare yahoo group post, I don't really do much opinion publishing, for myself, or a broader audience. It's funny, but there's almost a palpable pressure to say something clever, or witty, or ironic...or cynical. Through a jumble of impulses, I kept thinking how do I stay true to myself? Will I sound crazy? Dull? Profound? And then I realized I had already started typing, and the words were flowing fairly naturally. So I guess I'm just going to have wait and see how this works out. The only way to get in the saddle is to start posting, and not worry too much whether any of the aforementioned adjectives will apply.

In fact, I rather hope you'll discover the chameleon in me. If there's one "interesting" thing I might offer in this world, it's the alternatingy sublime and smelly seepage of the fickle, easily distracted organ in my skull. Ideally, I wanted to focus this blog on my interests in Western history - hence the selection of the Greek "oikoumene" (the inhabited world). But in the end, I'll also want to share other "distractions" with you - some photos I've taken, the books I'm reading, and the activities I'm participating in...the everyday passions I waste time, energy, and resources on. Enjoy it...or don't. But feel free to chime in! I love a good discussion...

To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times? - Cicero