Why Start a Blog?

Hello! Let me start by introducing myself. I'm Lindsey Grafe.

As of writing this, I'm a college student who's lived most of my life on the east coast in the good ol' U.S. of A. I enjoy a large variety of things - mostly food - and I spend the majority of my time on the internet. My family and my faith are the most important things to me. Also, I have a bit of an obsession with the sky. And dragons.

Okay, so now you know who I am, and I know what you're thinking. Why in the world are you starting a blog? At least, I'm sure someone is thinking that. And I have an answer for them. Or you. For whoever's asking. And that is this:

Because I can.

...

Honestly, that's the answer. That's it. Really.

Want a little backstory? Alrighty, then.

A couple of nights ago, I tried to go to sleep early and wound up having a slight mental breakdown mixed with a teeny tiny existential crisis. You know, the usual. I realized I was going back to school soon and I didn't want to leave. I didn't want to go back to the constant overwhelming stress of schoolwork and the sub-par wi-fi connection. And although I love my friends, I didn't want to leave my family.

The wave of depression that crashed over me at the thought of going back to school and falling back into the same routine was enough to make me question nearly everything about my life. Am I really pursuing the right career? Do I really want to go through another year of college after this? Is this really what I want to do with my life?

Yes.

So, with that out of the way, I moved on to attempting to figure out why I was feeling so overwhelmed; why I felt like I'd wasted my break, even though I really enjoyed some of the things I did. The answer hit me very clearly once I actually thought about it.

I was bored.

A certain monotony had settled into my daily life. Wake up, spend all day on the computer, go to sleep. Or, alternatively: wake up, spend all day in classes, go to sleep. And even though I'd do something different every once-in-a-while, it was always the same different things. Writing. Reading. Art. Music. It was a bit of a startling realization, but I haven't tried anything new new for a very long time.

Fortunately, most important step to fixing a problem is figuring out what's wrong. So I thought to myself, 'Self, how do you cure boredom?'

Heck if I know.

Time to break out the search engines.

And, what do you know, I found a blog that spoke of ways to break monotony. It made a lot of good points that I logged in the back of my mind for later, but one of the ones that really jumped out at me was 'pursuing something new with vigor.'

Something new, huh? Well, why not blogging? And, voila!

Ultimately, I have lots of ideas that I want to share. I want to get people to see things from a new perspective and to think about things they may not have otherwise. I crave stimulating conversations. I want to learn about the other humans that inhabit this planet and I want to share my knowledge and experiences.

That's all I really want. That's all I've ever really wanted in life.

With that, I'm going to challenge myself: for the next week, I will post something every other day to get used to blogging. I will try to include either pictures or doodles with each post. Once that time is up, I'll continue to update once a week (because that seems pretty manageable for a student).

Let's see where this journey takes us!

(Also, I'm totally counting this as Wednesday, even though it's after midnight here. See you on Friday!)