I tried skateboarding once.

It didn’t go well.

I was 20 years old when I first gave it a shot. I didn’t count on it being too difficult; I’m pretty good on a bicycle, and that has half as many wheels… so I should be twice as good at skateboarding.

I was at the skate park, and a 13 year old boy was teaching me how to “drop in,” a foundational skill of any real skater. I stood at the top of the ramp with my skateboard hanging off the edge. My goal was to fall down the ramp, onto my skateboard, and ride down. In other words, my goal was to sustain only minor injuries. I remember the feeling I had at the top of that ramp, wondering why sports like Oklahoma Noodling and Skateboarding even exist. I remember asking myself the question, “Why am I doing this??”

I have that same feeling right now, and I’m asking myself the same question. Blogging is cool just like skateboarding is cool, but its also awkward to get started. The mental image I have of me writing a blog is awesome… like me on a skateboard, zipping between traffic and awestruck observers; ollying over curbs and small children; sticking it to the man with my mad skills. Actually pushing myself off the ledge–hoping I hit the ground with the wheels and not my face–is a different feeling altogether.

So now that I’m actually sitting down to try and make this image a reality, I’ve got to answer the question: “Why am I doing this?”

“Because I need to.” is the simple answer.

There’s something wrong with my brain. It’s tough to say if my problem is uncommon, since I can’t read minds, but I tell myself it is. An episode of spongebob helped me figure out what my problem is. It showed the inner workings of spongebob’s brain, depicted as an office filled with workers, organizing information into file cabinets. I imagine that for most intelligent people, this is an apt metaphor. Their thoughts show up to their brain as if it were an office. They clock in and get work done. There is a sense of order, and they talk politely to one another, and they work together to achieve a common goal.

My thoughts, on the other hand, show up to my brain and throw a house party. They turn up the music, and they break things, and they stay up way too  late accomplishing nothing in particular.

Writing is the best strategy I have for making sense of my thoughts and my life. I think best when I’m writing, so the more I do it, the better handle I tend to have on the chaos in my head. I want to grow. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions to a thousand different things, but they’re all vague and scattered. They don’t organize themselves. I’m hoping this blog will help me develop my thoughts into something coherent. I want to have a voice worth listening to.

So I’m just gonna go for it. I’m gonna start blogging. Maybe it’ll catch, and I’ll end up with a group of people that actually read this blog… or maybe it won’t. A blog that no one reads is really just a diary…  I don’t know if this will ever develop into a real blog. It might just be my diary, but I’m ok with that… for now.

There’s no way to know until I do it.

Anyway, here’s hoping that I’m better as a blogger than I was as a skater.