Why I Need to Blog

"No man is an island" - John Donne

This quote is one of the few things I remember from my three semesters of humanities in college. In fact, I even had to look up the author of the quote before posting this. In any case, this has stuck with me and often comes to mind. If I remember correctly from class discussions, this quote basically means that man (or woman) can't exist by themselves, they need to have others around them, to interact with. Last night I watched "Into the Wild". Pretty good movie. If you haven't seen it...stop reading now. The movie is about a guy who basically removes himself from society...living pretty much without material things, he burns his money, walks the country and finally ends up in the Alaskan wilderness. He's trying to find happiness. He lives in the wilderness alone, finding shelter and food and creating a pretty good life for himself. When he thinks he is content, he tries to go back home, only to find that he can't...he's stranded. At the end of the movie, when he realizes that he can't go back to people, he writes down his understanding of happiness: "happiness only real when shared".

I often feel like I am on this search for happiness. In the last 5 years I have lived in three different towns. All of the towns were at least 1 1/2 hours from where I grew up. The more I move, the further away I go. I feel like if I keep moving, I'll find that thing that has been illuding me...happiness. But I haven't found it yet, and I'm getting tired of the search.

I tend to keep all of my thoughts inside. When I hang out with friends, I usually steer the conversation to how they are doing or other topics and I don't let it get to how I am or what my life is. I seem to do that best through really long emails to them. I also live by myself, so I have no one to share things with at the end of the day...good or bad. So, that is my hope for my blog. That it will be a place where I can share my day, good or bad, where I can share my thoughts. I'm not a very good writer. I tend to ramble. I tend to make bigger deals out of things than I probably should. So, maybe I should call this blog my online therapy.

Hopefully my introductory blog wasn't too heavy. Perhaps I should say the other reason why I decided to blog... I read my friends blogs and their friends blogs and blogs of people I don't know. And when something fun happens to me, I find myself wondering how I would post that on a blog...what wording I would use! So, I thought maybe it was time to start my own :)