A Quick Word... On Blogging

Oh Dear. Look what you've done. Seriously. Look. A blog? I mean... A BLOG!? Honestly. Who do you think you are?

These are the thoughts running through my head as I tweak the layout of what is soon to become my official repository for web-based word dumping. And to be honest... even the word 'blog' has me both terrified, bemused, and a little self-conscious.

Which begs the question, why Lyndon - when you knew it would lead to self criticism and possible worldwide humiliation - why would you start writing one?

Which is a damn good question and one I will attempt to answer.

Firstly I will state that this is not a journal. Not least of all because I have nothing to log in a journal. No complicated mistaken-identity-ending-in-hilarity stories, and no day to day happenings depressing and typical enough to satisfy the qualifications of an 'ironic journal'. And as far as funny pet photos go, given that my fish Fillet and Flake have both died of extended constipation in the last month, I doubt there will be many photos of them doing anything but float upside down on their bellies looking all see-through to post here. (Just to clarify, they are both buried. They haven't been floating in the tank for three weeks.)

So if you can't expect to find the mundanities of my life posted on the web for all to see, what can you expect to find? Well 'A Quick Word' will contain short essays and rants by me on various topics, news that I think is worth sharing, reviews on books, television and movies and occasionally even short fiction if I can bear to part with it.

So... Why exactly?

Well for the past six months no-one has read my writing. Aside from essays for university of course, which are hardly the words I'm most proud of. Every year up until now I've been writing and having someone (a teacher usually) who is paid to sit down and actively share it with me. But suddenly that's stopped. The writing hasn't, but the sharing has.

So why blog? Because I want to share my words with people again. I don't care if they're my closest friends or complete strangers, if someone is prepared to sit and read what I've written, then I'll keep writing it.

This blog may not be the funniest or saddest thing you will ever read, but it's my writing, and it keeps it out of the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet, and keeps it in the face of the big wide-world.

So this blog is here for you, so that you can read something I've written,
It's for my words, so that they have somewhere to live,
But mostly?

It's for me.

And that's why.