It’s always a strange thing to start a site, especially the first post. It’s a bit of a quandary, how to strike a balance of tone and content, not to wax too self-important or with an excessive amount of false-modesty (because the truly, truly modest probably wouldn’t be publishing anything in the first place, really). Achieving such a balance seems a bit too troublesome, so I’ve come to terms with being tacky.
When I started publishing my thoughts online in college (in a different, now defunct Harvard-centric blog), it was for me a situation with unique but altogether easier to manage problems: It was exam period, and I had two history papers to write. I was ridiculously bitter, 1) because it was a very cold January in Cambridge, MA, and 2) because I had exams after a two-week winter break in December, whereas my peers from other colleges were still enjoying vacations at home. I started a blog to complain, and I did. That first post was already determined, spurned on by the desire to avoid real, required work. The hard parts, the subject and the motivation, were done for me. I lost both over time, and I updated less and less frequently until finally, I graduated. Both that chapter of my life and my discourse on the subject came to a natural and relatively fulfilling close.
Two hundred words later, and we get to the point. I’m feeling motivated again. There is no work to avoid yet and no theme to rely on, but those were, I think, crutches I need not rely on now. After one semester of medical school, I desperately miss the catharsis of a productive hobby (or two, or three). Reading textbooks and reading the news, even the Daily Show and Colbert Report, is not enough. So, with this new year, and at the dawn of a new semester, what better time than now to say: I will write. It will be a hobby, a release, a distraction from drudgery, and I will enjoy it.