A long time ago I kept a livejournal (I stopped using it 4 years ago). Today I went back and took a look at it. It was terrible. It was so bad I deleted all the posts and locked it down. No one purposely leaves their embarrassing crap lying around the internet, right? Having that thing online was like having the ugly cross-stitched "picture" your aunt made you for Christmas four years ago up in your living room. Ew. As terrible as reading my poorly written and occasionally drunken scrawl was, it was good because it forced me to realize a few things about my writing.
First off, I realized I was a terrible writer in college. My professors really should have failed me. More accurately, they should have failed me more. I can't believe I passed anything, ever. However, it was nice to realize my writing has improved over the last four years. I think the noticeable improvement in my writing is the reason I’m starting this blog. When reading my old livejournal, I realized a large part of the reason my writing was so bad was because I had never really written before and I was not being challenged to improve my preadolescent skills. I suppose the pressure to improve was there on some level but it wasn’t present in a way that worked for me. I was consistently getting B’s and C’s and, unlike most college kids who clamor for A’s, I was satisfied with those grades. I think this and my own laziness caused me to make a mistake. That mistake was not making improving my paltry writing a priority. For me, the experience of reading that journal was similar to what most people experience when they go back and read a few pages out of the My Little Pony journals they kept when they were 11 or 12. It was "cute" but mildly painful. The difference between me and pretty much everyone else is that they wrote theirs when they were twelve and I was 20 when I wrote mine. How embarrassing for me.
Fortunately, law school (yes, even with the expressive skills of a nine year old, I was able to get in) and the real world have improved my ability to put pen to paper - more often, fingers to keys - and get coherent results. Now, I don't mean to say my writing is strong, it's not. I still have a lot to learn and that gets me back to why I'm starting this blog. I’m starting this because I've found the easiest way for me to improve my writing is to write. I get to write for work but I need to write more. So, I'm going to write. This blog probably won't have one specific topic but, considering my interests, it will almost certainly focus on politics, religion, foreign affairs, and the law. I'm sure I'll also post about other things I enjoy like drawing, photography, books, the internet and video games.
I don't really expect anyone to read this but if you do read it, I hope you enjoy it and you should feel free to let me know what you think.
Now, on to the fun stuff.
