Why am I writing a blog? Why, as an unknown, a complete nonentity, am I daring to cast my words wantonly into the howling maw of internet anonymity? (Sorry, I've been wanting to say "anonymity" all day, and this was the perfect opportunity).
The answer, quite simply, is that if I do not do so, I shall go completely and utterly mad. I have reached that lovely point in my life when I must seek some form of self-expression because the frustration and depression have built up to an intolerable and critical mass.
OK, that was a little dramatic - another reason is that I have had very little opportunity since graduating University in which to practice my writing and communication. The main reason, however, is probably just a little less pointless, banal, and self-serving: I have a lot on my mind, and I want to tell people about it. If you find yourself to be the poor, unfortunate insomniac who, in a fit of inadvisable web-surfing have found your horrified gaze riveted to this splendiferous muck of stultified prose -- if you find yourself, breathless from your own screaming, tearless from hours of weeping, and nearly blinded from repeatedly smiting the walls, floor, and housemates with your forehead, if only it could make the words STOP -- if, to speak plainly, you (dear reader) find yourself so bored, helpless, and/or inebriated that you not only can tolerate but somehow find yourself welcoming this stream of grandiose, cut-rate, pseudo-intellectual drivel, then this blog is for you.
[Insert wink here.]
[[Not a reference to the popular and highly disappointing dating and hookup website convention known as a "Wink," in which a desperate attempt to secure amatory license for an evening results in the terrifying realization that the twenty-year-old nymph of the avatar photo is in fact a fifty-year-old transvestite from Jordan.]]
The point of the website is, first and foremost, to organize my own thoughts with the two or three people that, in some years' time, I can hope to have discovered this blog.
Secondly, I wish to work through some fundamental philosophical dilemmas that face my half-rate but highly curious mind. I wish to face head-on the disappointment of my newfound atheism, the sorrow of a lost evangelicalism, the desire to maintain morals and values (humanism) in the face of occasional nihilistic thoughts, and (perhaps most importantly) to combat a growing trend in popular discourse: determinism, the idea that free will is dead, and we are merely conscious robots cruising through our banal existences, doomed to suffer for a time before... Well, you get the picture. If I can conquer the demons bequeathed me by B.F. Skinner, I'll be doing just fine.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the summum bonum and sanctum sanctorum (you'll have to look those up for me, they simply sounded vaguely Latin-ish and impressive): I started this blog after seeing a psychiatrist for the very first time. I felt like a freak for going to the doctor, but things had gotten, as they say, rather bad indeed. Facing suicide after a disappointing college career, some family problems, and other more personal problems, I made a last-ditch effort to save myself. I want to share that experience, to make sense of it, and (hopefully) to let a few other fellow-sufferers to know not only that depression is quite real (NOT the illusion I was raised to believe it to be), but that it is more than survivable. Having just been diagnosed with severe depression, this will be an interesting journey to share.
If this blog amuses, entertains, or informs anyone, that will be a grand and welcome bonus. If it remains unread until the crack of doom (I once met a plumber named Dom, but I suppose that was a different crack), then at least I will have re-learned a little about writing, and gained a much-needed emotional relief from getting some of my thoughts out.
Peace,
TMB
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