This is my first blog entry.  Ever.  I never thought I would have a site like this to call my own but, here I am.

Almost a year ago, someone suggested to me that I write a blog.  I was training her to cover for me at work while I was out for a week helping to host relatives from out of town.  She was watching whatever creative touches I put on the snacks I set up for my co-workers, or the email announcements I put together, and thought I should keep a blog about how I did all that.

I could, but I won’t.  Or at least, that won’t be the main focus of what you’ll find here.  Maybe I’ll share some of that stuff later on.  Anyway, back to why I started this.  When she made that suggestion, I thought, I’m already on Twitter a lot, and that’s micro-blogging, why would I need to start something else that takes more time and effort to maintain?  I brushed off the idea.  I like tweeting.  It’s short and sweet, straight and to the point, and leaves enough of a wall up so I don’t feel completely exposed.

But in recent months, 140 characters doesn’t always cut it when I feel like putting my thoughts out there.  Why do I even NEED to put my thoughts out into the online world, where they’ll in theory, exist forever?  Isn’t that just keeping an online journal?  I like notebooks, why not just keep an old fashioned journal?  I used to do that sporadically during my adolescence, but then had the fear of “Oh my God, if I die young my family is going to eventually find these notebooks and I’d be so embarrassed.  Dead, but embarrassed.”  Plus, after a while my hand started to hurt from writing.  Typing makes me feel like a bad-ass.  Like Garcia on Criminal Minds.  I love how quickly she types (even though it’s probably just the home row).  I was a stenographer ten years ago and would transcribe dictation at 63 WPM – do you know how glorious my computer keyboard sounds?!

I’m drifting again, I apologize.  I feel like I “need” to put my thoughts online because in the past few years, a lot of my thoughts are too long or too deep to put out into the Twitterverse.  Look how much I’ve written already – someone do the math and calculate how many tweets this entry would take up at this point.  Whatever the amount is, it’s too much.

And so far, half of 2016 has been so depressing that it’s just been too much; too much hate, too much violence, too much injustice, too much fear, too much despair.  It can be overwhelming to try and be positive when it seems like the world is falling apart.  I’m putting my thoughts online and blogging now because……what I’m hoping to do with this blog is to simply share my thoughts and experiences, and maybe inspire some positivity for people. It’s my way of paying it forward from all the people who have ever lifted me up. Not everything will be that deep though.  I can almost guarantee some posts will just be expanded versions of my tweets.

So from the Twitterverse to the Blogosphere – by the way, spell check didn’t underline Blogosphere but it underlined Twitterverse, that’s the world we live in now – I’m here.

I know a lot of people scoff at the concept of social media and how society today is just oversharing too much.  I agree to a certain extent.  But we are humans, and we coexist with each other.  And if this is another way to branch out further to make connections that otherwise would not have occurred offline, then why not?

I don’t know yet what my blog is going to look like a month from now, or many months beyond that.  Still trying to figure this all out as I go.  What I do know is that the words you’ll be reading are direct from me, although sometimes I may have friends guest-blog if they like.  What you read is how I speak.  I’ve always written that way (which is probably why I disliked writing academic papers).

Here is my disclaimer: I will always try to be as respectful as possible with what I share because I don’t want to offend anyone, but I can’t guarantee that some posts won’t be angry rants.  I might inadvertently say something off the cuff and I apologize in advance if that upsets anyone.  But what I ask in return, dear reader, is to extend that same respectful courtesy to me (and other bloggers and readers).  There’s really just no need to be rude here.

Now then, let’s MEGA-BLOG.

(Is that the opposite of micro-blog?  Would it be macro?  Macro-blog?  Whatever.)