facing forward
I’ve spent more time than I care to remember thinking, mulling, plotting, planning, strategizing & otherwise obsessing over the topic & content of this, the very first post of what I hope will become a Very Important Blog.
As indicated by the three words in the speech bubble in the upper right-hand corner of this page, my intention is to use this space to write about words. A bit more specifically, I’d like to spend some time here reflecting on the words we we use when we talk to each other, sell to each each other, argue with each other, campaign against each other, & otherwise interact with each other.
Believing it to be very important that a Very Important Blog about this very important topic begin with, well, a very important (or at least somewhat insightful) post, I set about doing all those mental exercises that we learned about a couple of paragraphs ago.
What I didn’t do, of course, was actually write.
There were many excellent reasons, I told myself, for continuing to put off Post #1. It made perfect sense to wait for the perfect post about the perfect topic, I told myself. Sometimes, doing things right means waiting for the right moment to start doing those things, I told myself.
Then I read this.
And I realized that the real reason this space remained untouched by either word or thought was that I was afraid. I was afraid of running out of topics, of not expressing myself intelligently, of not having this whole thing mapped out, of not following through on the promise and potential of this blog to make a meaningful contribution to the ongoing, ever-evolving conversation that is the Internet.
Of course, after reading Steve Thomas’s excellent post on Ashley Ambirge’s amazing site, those fears seemed kinda silly, ya know?
And if that point hadn’t been driven home quite far enough, the day after reading Steve’s post, someone in my Twitter feed shared this: “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” (Martin Luther King Jr.)
So …
Hi there. My name is Hugh C. McBride, and I love words. I’ve spent the majority of my professional life working with words, and much of my leisure time reading, writing & thinking about them. I’m looking forward to using this space to reflect on, debate and discuss the Who’s, What’s, Where’s, When’s, Why’s and How’s of the words we use. I look forward to contributing to the conversation, and I hope to make this a place where folks gather to read, think and discuss.
Also, I’m thrilled to finally be done with Post #1.
