I have often considered the prospect of starting a blog, but had never managed to get around to it. Several factors had contributed to my unwillingness, but primarily I am concerned with the stigma that has come to be associated with bloggers, and the issue of revealing my somewhat personal thoughts and feelings to the world. To me, blogging may be loosely defined as a method by which extroverted personalities vent emotional energy on matters they deem important. From my limited understanding, this most typically involves political and social issues--and although I also find some aspects of such issues worthy of commentary, my opinion would do relatively little to reverse the course of events. I am reminded of a demotivational poster I had come across that stated something like, "Blogging. Never have so many had so much to say to so few." Perhaps this is true. And, perhaps I too will now become one such sad person. I consider myself extremely introverted, although those close to me will disagree. I actually enjoy unstructured thought, imagination, and as the blog title implies, reflection. As is most likely the case with everyone, ambiguous concepts have populated my mind for many years, and on occasion I cannot contain myself and seek to express my thoughts on paper. These thoughts remain stored away somewhere on the hard disk, effectively lost for all time. To a certain extent, as I find myself nourishing the incognito identity, I am comforted in liberating the ill-conceived notions into extinction. On the other hand, there is something powerful in genuine self-expression. There is something powerful in asserting a unique identity rather than cowering in self doubt.
I enjoy writing, but lately, due to the nature of my studies, it has been overly structured. Being required to produce writing intended for technical audience with a narrow purpose has stifled the organic nature of writing. Paying much attention to what I consider the minor aspects of information design left no room to develop critical ideas, much less creativity or expression. Although technical writing has very important attributes, attributes I intend to utilize in the future, at heart I simply love to write.
Thus, this blog has little structure or purpose--it may or may not be populated with my personal reflections. This is an experiment, so let us see what may come of it.
