I. Welcome

Welcome. If you are reading this, you fall into one of two categories: group A is people from my Creative Writing class, who know I'm writing this (as I know they're writing their own); group B is everybody else, who will probably only reach this site by chance, on a whim. You are all equally welcome, and though group A people have the advantage of (a little) familiarity with the themes contained herein, the experience will hopefully be more novel and rewarding for group B visitors.

As you may have guessed from the title and from the identity of group A, this blog contains many diverse, often random thoughts on Creative Writing, a semester high school course I'm taking at the time of this writing. I may as well begin now, with some ruminations on transience (such a delicious word!)

Obviously, this blog will not continue on forever; I will have to stop posting, at the latest, when I die (yet another example of transience: my finite existence). But to fall back to less weighty considerations, I have a sad suspicion that this blog will "end," i.e. cease to be updated, at the end of Creative Writing in June. Depending on the quality and qualities of what is posted here and hereafter, this may or may not be a loss and a pity. Equally regrettable will be those of you from group B who pass by, realize you've clicked the wrong link and/or don't much care for the sophomoric ramblings of a high school senior, and never return again. There will probably be quite a few of you; or (even worse) next to none: that would be awful, because I would prefer this blog to get as wide a readership as possible, and most importantly, as wide a regular readership as possible. But there again we run into the transience of the medium of blogging: at some point, it will end, and no matter how many regular readers I have at that point, many will lose heart at the end of our common journey and never return again. (My heartfelt gratitude and amazement to anyone who actually comes back and rereads favorite posts after the blog quits, or I quit it; unless, of course, no such person exists or will exist, in which case sorry, wrong number.)

But enough of this deprecating and potentially depressing talk of transient phenomena in the form of blog posts. I'd like to conclude with one of my favorite things: unconventionality. I enjoy it, most of the time, except when it turns out to be too unconventional even for my tastes. You see some of it here in this entry: a welcome message that is long, involved, long, ironic, and too long, and makes the horrible mistake of dividing its potential readers into groups without even asking their opinion (for which I apologize unreserved ly--but how many of you have continued reading up to here?)! I like to think that gives me a refreshing touch of unconventionality; but I also think, though I don't like to, that it completely destroys any chance of good, fun-to-read writing. (You may notice that I tend to accept completely contrasting views of a topic; now is this unconventional as well, or just indecisive? I can't tell...) Unconventionality is two-edged, and often three-edged just to mess with your mind and break out of the confining boxes of convention--that's what I love about it; however, it is easy to do something unconventionally and fail miserably at it by virtue of your unconventional approach. The balance is difficult to find. I probably have yet to find it. But it will be one of the things I search for, on this journey that remains in a single definable yet difficult-if-not-impossible-to-pinpoint location on some server somewhere, also known as this blog. (Reflect for an instant on the intriguing fact that you have, in all probability, no idea where this blog post is stored, and yet you will always be able to find it by typing in a URL into your browser--yet another mind-expanding experiment with an unconventional perspective.) My hope is that the unconventionality I include will make this blog fun, or at least interesting, to read (and to keep whatever readers I may have the supreme fortune to attract coming back for more until I am cut short by transience).

In any case, whether you read the long-winded paragraphs above or not, whether you read this blog or not, whether you read this sentence or not: Welcome. The journey promises to be most interesting.