So Many Ideas, So Little Time...

If you're like me, your interests come and go with the tides and what keeps your attention is highly dependent on what looks the shiniest or where the jingling keys are at any given time.  On the grandest (and most expensive) scale this is demonstrated in my choice to go back and take classes to get my Computer Science degree after initially going to college intending to study it but then switching to a History and Latin double major.  Although class takes up a good chunk of time and could constitute a hobby at this point, there are so many things I would like to do but just don't find the time for.

Blogging

For those who aren't aware, you are currently reading what is called a "blog."  I'm not going to give you a Webster definition for that word, but according to a book I once picked up it has something to do with there being conversation about the topics being written.  I suppose that is what a comments section at the bottom of a post is for.  This particular "blog," (and now that we're familiar with the term I will continue use without quotations) is basically a cheap mix of what I would ultimately like to be individual blogs. 

A Venn Diagram

A blog needs a purpose, a drive, a sort of....... milieu.  Ultimately it needs limits and parameters.  The pretense for this blog is that it is for people who are "like me."  Although I am not a huge fan of the "everyone is a special and unique snowflake" idea, it does sort of hold when it comes to interests.  Sure, we can match up almost the entire Venn Diagram (see image) of two people but at some point the we will diverge.  Of course posts on a blog about a particular topic will not always be engaging to the all of the readership all of the time, but a more narrowed sense of purpose would give someone who doesn't know me personally a potential reason to read it.

The problem is I think doing this would be fun, but it is not a true passion of mine.  A food blog about Minneapolis?  That would be a blast except: A. There are likely dozens out there, B. I don't eat out that much, C. I don't have a good camera to document visits, D. I have no experience in the food industry (though my first job was as a busser), E. I keep coming up with reasons not to do it.  E, as in multiple choice tests, covers the "all of the above" for nearly all ideas about blogs for me.  If it was a passion, I would push through. However, since it is a fleeting jingle of the keys, I am reduced to offhanded comments on a webpage with a .blogspot after it.

Aside from food, I would love, or I convince myself I would love, to have a Computer Science blog to document my learnings and share them with the whole wide world; a Video Games blog to share my love of the about 3-5 games I actually play; a TV Show blog to comment on shows that have already been released for years and I now find on Netflix; a Netflix blog to show my comments on TV Shows that for years released have been; a Podcasting blog, again with the review of maybe a couple I actually listen to; a Book blog to showcase the weird titles for books I come across each day; a Latin blog in which I could break down the lines of the Aeneid and help struggling Latinists cheat on their earliest homework; and dozens of others that come to me during my walking commute and have left me by the time I make it to my computer.  In the course of writing this paragraph two more have dawned on me but I feel the point has been made.

All of these are ideas, all ideas that would take time, time that, history has shown, I don't have or don't go out of my way to have.  Why would I want to blog?  It sounds "fun." But as with many things the idea of something is often more potentially satisfying than the reality, unless you really kick ass at it and know enough about something to educate people on a topic in which you are passionate.  Do I feel better for having written this? Yes, but this is the sort of blog I don't really like to write.  It is a rant, a chance for me to impose my ideas upon you, the reader, without giving any hard evidence or any reason for you to believe me.  Even better, it's about a topic that you can, at best, relate to, but really have no reason to care about.  Not that you don't care about me (perhaps you do, but likely you don't), but this is not the place for me to trumpet every idea I have about every thing that.......

Blogs tend to lead to rambling sentences and paragraphs that make less and less sense as they go on.  Having said this (perfect passive participle, thank you Latin), I think it is time this one ends.  So many ideas, so little time... and that is just on blogging.  Ugh, I won't subject you to my other fleeting interests......... in this post.