An Apology

Moving swiftly on from those halcyon days of Livejournal digital shouts, I feel it's now time to join the adult world of 'Blogging'. As you may have noticed, I've gone with the tried-and-tested formula of a title adapted from a popular song. This has the advantage of making me feel both intelligent and popular, but the choice was more than an a quick search through iTunes to find something appropriate. Writing for me has always been a struggle to overcome my inherent laziness/inertia, and I've always needed a carrot/stick to get going and let flow my thoughts upon the (electronic) paper. Having a focus - in this case, a title - should provide enough impetus to actually get going. 'Moving Through Stillness' is a pretty good descriptor of how I feel creating anything (music or words) - any progress I make always feels painfully slow, as if wading through a thick treacle-fog. The allusion to Popular Beat Combo 'The Dirty Projectors' may be fairly cliché, and I know it sounds pretty faggy and pretentious. But hey. Maybe I am that little bit faggy and pretentious.

My previous diary/journal/writing-about-self projects have been pretty sparse. As I mentioned above, I recently dug up my old Livejournal and promptly deleted it, along with my Myspace profile. While looking back at my old entries (most of which were along the lines of "WHY DO I NOT HAVE A GIRLFRIEND????") may have been a cathartic process once, but now it's just embarrassing to myself. Not to mention that I still have many of the same anxieties and fears as I did 5 years ago, which wasn't the most uplifting realisation.

I also recently went to India for 3 weeks (and I may well 'blog' about that in the near future) and kept a travel journal. I got as far as 120~ pages of an A5 Moleskin (double spaced), covering the first two weeks, which I felt was pretty good going. While at first I found the process to be fairly easy, words tumbling from pen to paper, I soon ran out of steam and ended up lagging a week behind. The specific problem I ran into was that updating my diary every day had become a chore, and fun as it was I just didn't have time in between hectic activities in the sub-continent, socialising in the evenings and sleeping. I now keep trying to finish off the last week, as I still have a fairly good memory of what happened, but every passing day the inertia grows more concrete. Still, I'm fairly proud of what I wrote, as I always made the effort to make it an interesting read. I may scan it in/transcribe it someday.

Similarly, back in the summer of 2006, I travelled around Spain and France with two friends. We took a book to record our thoughts/experiences, and while it started well, it soon petered out as we grew tired of trying to work out whose turn it was to write in the diary. The book eventually disappeared somewhere outside Nice, so my in-depth and tongue-in-cheek field report on the differences between the common flies of Seville and Cadiz has been pretty much lost or ever.

No, despite often having the best intentions chronicling my life has never quite worked out. I've always been attracted to the idea (I've loved the first two Adrian Mole books for years) but my typical Gen-Y attention span always kicks in. Plus, there's something so hideously self-obsessed about writing a diary. Just what are the reasons for trying to replicate all of life's experiences in the written word? Posterity? Therapy? The idea that by leaving a permanent record of the ever-fleeting present on the world one's existence is gratified more seems pretty vain. But then again, I AM an egotistical competitive bastard sometimes, as exemplified by the pretentious title (and here we are back at the start again). In any case, my main reason for starting this is not one of (I hope) ego or vanity, but honest self-improvement. I may well in the next few years/months(!) try and embark on a career as a music journalist/writer/critic, and so I'm going to need to practice writing. My weekly contributions to the Leeds Student are great experience (not to mention fun and a cheap way to get CDs) but there's only so much I can do, and there's little room for writing in markedly different styles. Of course, that's not to say every entry in this thing is going to be a different experiment in syntaxt, form and structure, but it'll always be nice to have the choice. Anyway, I consider this project to be a blank slate, upon which I can find my writing 'voice'.

And so! On with business, it's now time to outline my Aims & Objectives for this 'Web Log'.

I promise to:

• Write well-written and interesting things that interest me and make me want to write well.
• Carry on in the face of zero readership. Optimism and ignorance will carry me where popularity has failed.
• Update this on some kind of semi-regular schedule. While obviously I don't want Gigabytes of trivia floating around on the internet with my name attached, I don't want to fall into the pit of inertia (much).
• Remain amusing. While at the time of writing this I have precisely 0 followers, it's entirely likely that one day I may have as many as 3, or maybe even 5! In any case, I'd hate to bore anyone who gave up their time to read my outpourings. Hell, even if no-one does read this blog, at least I'd amuse myself.
  

I shall avoid:

• Writing about my 'emotions' or 'feelings'. At least in an 'emotional' or 'feely' way. That's what Twitter's for, and it made me delete my Livejournal. Secret diaries are not meant for archiving.
• Blogging about blogging. Either things like 'ah, I should really update this', or the state of blogging in general. In fact, as an addendum: I shall never use the term 'Blogosphere' except in a highly ironic (highronic?) context.
• In-jokes, cryptic writing styles, and (excessive) pretension. See the aforementioned point about being entertaining.
  
• Superlative apostrophe's.

Well, that probably covers the basics. It's not exactly a manifesto, but a few pointers. And that's all I'm going to need for now.

Peace and love, over and out, &c.