The post where they start posting

 

 

Starting a blog is hard.

Naming this first post, for example. It sure is hard to come up with something that isn’t too wanky. ‘Not wanky’ doesn’t come too easily to me, unfortunately. 

The name of the blog itself is equally hard; my original idea was to call this blog ‘We, The Middle.’ As in like, we are in the middle of society, middle class, we are the middle children Chuck Palahniuk bullshit. Isn’t that just the wankiest thing you’ve ever heard in your life?

That was a .gif. Is that too Buzzfeed-ie? We’ll work that out along the way.

So anyway I’ve started a blog, and for this extremely self-conscious first entry I will address the very topic of first blogs and blogging itself. Treading the meta in an elegant literary dance not unlike a baby giraffe walking for the first time. 
 
So what do you need to write a blog?

A platform?

Something to actually write about?

The ability to express yourself competently through the written word?

An audience willing to read your hackneyed drivel?
 
Well that’s all well and good, but it’s certainly turning out to be easier said than done. Are you going to like what I post? Will you like my style? I’m already seeing the ‘smug prick’ comments. Even my idea for post content is a little vague and indistinct. 
 
Whether or not you (or I) have something unique to say is the hardest thing to determine. I’m a big believer in saying your piece, getting it out there, and standing by it. I also don’t mind an Oxford comma. It’s an intimidating prospect, but isn’t a blog just the best way to go about it? This is your soapbox, and you can hoot and a’holler all you damn well please while perched atop your woodwork. 

Of course, having an opinion and shouting it as loud as you can certainly doesn’t preclude you from copping a rebuttal or two though. Writing and posting in alignment with popular opinion is easy enough, but you just get the feeling that truly persuasive writing or communication escapes the majority out there. 

Then again, your message could also just be plain wrong. A wrong turn in a YouTube binge or the things that you find by spending a bit too long on Reddit are painful evidence of that.

So I’m brought back to my point above about standing by your point. Provide evidence. Communicate articulately. Drive your point home. Really rub that shit in.

That’s what I want to do. I want to write about what matters to me. Along the way I hope that the things I write about matter to you too. I can guarantee I will be super duper vague to begin with, but ultimately I’d like to write about what it is like to live today’s life. Of course I am a white middle class male, so my understanding of living today’s life is incredibly blinkered and filtered via privilege-coloured glasses, but we’ll work that out as we go along.

Is ‘zeitgeist’ a wanky term? 

As my whiny nihilistic blog name suggests, I will write about life in the middle. There will be much self-aggrandising and a gif littered here and there, but I hope that you like what I have to give. We’ll laugh a little. We’ll love a little. We’ll marvel at exactly how in love with my own opinions I am.

I promise to try to make it a little more accessible, too.
Come with me, and you’ll be in a world of pure procrastination.

2 thoughts on “The post where they start posting”

    1. So true. I actually wrote the first 6 posts here on another platform, before cutting my losses and porting it all over to my own site here. The templates on the older platform just looked so terrible and it wasn’t the sort of image I wanted my content to be associated with.

      That being said, my content isn’t exactly the most serious-est of contents. But I wanted it all to looks super dodgy and wanky in my OWN way.

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