Such is life

Salutations to all, and welcome to my first blog, ever. Up until this point in my life I have steadfastly resisted the urge to become a blogger, but have succumbed due partly to the gentle encouragement of my beautiful wife, and partly from the boredom I face during stretches of work lasting 30 minutes or more. To kick things off, it seems fitting to dedicate my first blog to nothing more or less than blogging itself.

Blogging is an interesting phenomenon, derived I think from our need to feel like our lives have meaning. That someone, somewhere, is witnessing what we are doing and thinking, and perhaps even learning a little from us. The problem with this, I used to think, is that aside from a few actually interesting people in the world, most of us are boring with the same ideas that everyone else in the world has had at some point in their lives before. I think part of the reason I resisted reading blogs, writing blogs or even acknowledging that blogs are an ok thing is centered somewhere around this fact. In fact I even remember a conversation I had with a friend when I first heard about blogging in its web 2.0 version. It went something along the lines of me not accepting that blog is an actual word, and then laughing at the idea of people being so vain as to think that anyone is interested in what they have to say. I have held onto this belief for years. It's kind of ironic, because I had no problems with forums, articles (which are suspciously similar to blogs anyway...), youtube, status updates, or any of the other web 2.0 crazes (except maybe twitter but I guess thats closer to blogging than anything else on the list), even though they all center around the same theme. I think it has something to do with how blogs are structured. They aren't question/answer type venues like forums, where the conversation evolves only by different users inputting their ideas and opinions to bring the topic to fruition. They also aren't factual like articles where topics at least need to have some basis in logical reality and have a clear defined purpose from the start that readers can know "when I have finished reading this article, I will know more about subject x". No, blogs stand alone (well...next to twitter anyway) as pure unedited, unwashed glimpses into what the everyday person is thinking about any random topic that they came up with for that week/day/hour/whatever. And what the hell is the point in that?

Fast forward to today and here I am posting about how useless blogs are in a fucking blog. Oh how the times change. But that's just the point I'm trying to make. The times do change and unless we are open to changing our views, opinions and ideas as we progress through our lives, we will be left behind. I had a realization that blogs are one of the great treasures of the Internet. The Internet itself was developed as a tool, a tool to communicate and share information across distances. What it has become is something else, almost a living thing. But I digress. The point I'm trying to make is that the Internet has grown from field experts swapping information to everyone in the entire world being able to swap information. There are some very smart people in this world; every single person I consider myself friends with I would say are fairly smart individuals. They all have pockets of knowledge about this or that, facts that come out every now and then, and opinions on everything that they have ever come across during their time on this world. And that, my friends, is the key. Opinions are everything. They shape everything. From the way governments are run, to the way individuals treat each other, everything comes from our opinions about the various things we see in life. So I would argue this, one of the best things you can do in your life is seek out as many different opinions on as many different subjects as you can. And don't just read them, try and understand them. Push yourself to consider opinions that challenge your own. This is how we have evolved, this is how we have shaped the world around us. By considering opinions that challenge the social norm.

To bring this full circle, I realized that blog's are the tool to share our opinions on the subject matter of life encounters. So read a blog, subscribe to a few, and see if you learn a thing or two. We are only here for a short time people, absorb as much information as you can to better leave your mark here when you're done. I know I'm late to the table on this one. I'm sure you were all aware of this before you started reading. After all, this is a blog, and you are reading it right? But I wanted to share my example of growing and learning with you, and how it is generally a good idea to consider things that go against what you already think.

- Dan