My First Post

Thursday, June 4, 2020

Well, here goes nothing. Hello world! This is my first blog post. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I don’t think I’ll be very good at it at first, so please bear with me.

I guess I’ll start off with why I’m starting a blog. The idea popped into my head a few weeks ago, when all the coronavirus stuff was first starting. I was sitting on my bed and trying to come up with things that I could work on to develop myself as a person. I thought it was important to have something to keep me going, to keep me positive and give me something to do instead of just sitting around and growing depressed.

I had already tried to start a few other hobbies at that point. I got a guitar for my birthday (January 27, in case you’re wondering), and I had bought a guitar book from my university bookstore with songs to learn how to play, and I was slowly learning how to play guitar. I had picked up a few books that I thought would be good to read on the side like C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves, or Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor, and they were good, but sometimes I got kinda bored reading them. Thinking is hard.

My guitar and the song book that I bought.

So I was sitting on my bed (I tend to do that alot), and thinking of what else I could do to make my life interesting and productive, and I thought about how much I wanted to start a diary. I thought it would be cool to just write down my thoughts day-by-day, and then later, maybe even years later, I could look back and see how I’ve changed. I already had my prayer journal though, but that wasn’t really the right place to just put random thoughts about my day. Then I came up with the idea of a blog.

A blog seemed pretty good. It would kinda be like a public diary (now that’s an interesting oxymoron), and people could make comments if they want, and it would be a way for my friends and family to know what’s going on in my life when I’m not around. It would also be a way for me to improve my writing skills (hopefully). I’m a Philosophy major, and writing papers is definitely the worst part, so I’ve been wanting to improve my writing skills for awhile.

I was totally against the idea of monetizing the blog too; that would make it less “pure”. Whenever I find something that’s free, but with advertisements or little product recommendations from being sponsored or things like that, it always seems like the person is being kinda dishonest. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but it always bugs me. I wonder if what they say is what they really mean, or if they’re just saying it because they want/need money.

The best part is that I already had a place to put the blog! I had an old (and ugly) website that got set up in 7th grade to put a few programming projects, and it was in need of a makover anyways. Now all I need to do is learn how to do web design…

Here’s how my website looked for like 6+ years

Whelp, I’ve already spend a few weeks on learning web design, and I’m definitely making progress, but It’s hard when I don’t really have anything to put on my website. I sit down and I’m like… “so what should I put here again?” As I’m writing this post, I don’t even have plans for a place to put it. Oh well. What comes first, the blog, or the blog post?

I think that’s enough for today. God bless you, whoever you are, and I hope you found reading this an interesting and enjoyable experience.

– Ben