I have had, in my short stint on the Internet, a fair amount of blogs. I’ve had public blogs and private blogs, photo blogs and music blogs. I’ve had secret blogs, I’ve had blogs that even my family read. And almost all of them start like this, with some forced introduction full of promise, some fresh sheet of paper and the future stretched out before them.

And, every single one of them, sooner or later, is abandoned.

I’d like to think it’s because I move on, that I grow. But in all honesty? I’m just not very good at keeping something going (ask my wife, haw haw). I tend to start a project full of piss and vinegar, only to give up for the next new thing. This is not unique to the realm of digital expression – my bookshelves are chock full of half-full journals.

My problem with blogging, why I swore it off and gave it up a year ago, is that I think it is a symptom of what’s wrong with my generation. We were raised by idealist parents, those intrepid 70’s new parents who swore they weren’t going to be like their old man, who read Spock and Free to Be You and Me and believed that the best thing they could teach their child was that they were unique, special and important.

This, in my humble opinion, has led us to here, where the convergence of the maturation of the generation has intersected with a technological forum for us to express our unique, special and important opinions to whomever will read them. The Solipsistic Age. The ME Age.

And then, of course, there was the annoying fact that when I hung out with friends, they already knew everything that was happening in my life, having read my blog.

All of these things remain true, even as I embark on this new blog. I still believe it to be a masturbatory endeavor, that there’s only so many interesting and ironic takes on the real world one person can absorb. I still agree that things like Twitter represent the “vomited up minutia of everyday life” (credit to whomever said that to me at a party). I still will likely abandon it a few years down the road.

But some of my entries from my old blogs are my favorite things I’ve ever written. Some of the best friends I have are because I wrote them, and they read them. And, finally, it’s for work, so my puritanical ethic will maybe keep me doing it.

Welcome! Let’s go explore.