Rob Eberhardt

Check check, “sssibilance”

Alright, “hello world” woulda worked too, but I hate clichés.  Now pardon me while I find my own voice...

Reluctant as I am to get near what seem like cliché opening posts, I now understand why they they're popular.  In particular, the usual statement of intentions -- such as “I plan to talk about technical things and my seven beautiful schnauzers” -- now makes sense to me.  It's a way of setting a goal and reminding yourself to pursue it.  The “yourself” part is what's weird tho...

See, blogging rubs against several parts of my social conditioning -- inhibitions in fact.  One is manners: it's rude to talk about yourself too much.  The other is the avoidance of seeming like a “know-it-all”:  I learned to wrap statements in phrases like “I think” or “that's my opinion.” 

“Blogging is pure vanity,” and vanity is bad, right? 

Those inhibitions just don't fit here, though, which I realized the moment I started typing.  Basically, a blog (mine anyway -- there I go already, case-in-point) is about me, it's all about me.  Terms like “I think” and “that's just my opinion” do belong in a conversation (they're certainly conducive to a friendly one, tho perhaps not as lively of one :>).  Yes, they have their place in a dialog, but not in a monologue.

(Aside:  apparently we Americans aren't consistent in our -log/logue spelling?  I'm not, anyway.  I never noticed that before.)

So there should be a time and place to be completely self-centered, and it's more commonly known as introspection.  I am definitely an introvert, so I do plenty of that.  The difference here is that doing this in a blog is introspection-out-loud.  I'm used to filtering what I express, all the way from my grand secret plans for world domination, down to simple parts of speech, which just happens to be conversational-lube.  ...Not that I plan to give away my secret plans (suffice it to say it begins just after “get stinking rich”), but I don't wanna sound or feel stilted either.

This is a journal/log, though, and more personal expression than I'm used to lately.  However, y'all would get bored quick if it was always this verbose.  I just had to get that out of my system first. 

I guess that's another issue: I do want to take a dump-it-out-first approach here, rather than the filter-and-refine-it for the audience style I learned as an English major.  It's a forest-for-the-trees situation: I feel like my unwavering focus on succinct expression has made me miss larger ideas. (Ironic bit here: I just spent a lot of effort expressing that very thought in language -- hopefully it's not always a catch-22).   *

Anyway, hopefully saying it out-loud and without reservation will pave that road for an interesting journey.  ...So that's my intention for this blog: to express myself without the cruft of social inhibitions. 

That's one intention, anyway.  I'll get to the other(s?) shortly...

* (Ironic bit#2 here: I just re-edited the post for succinctness anyway, so perhaps the old-school first draft/final draft approach is the answer to my bad edit-as-you-think habit).

So, is this thing on?