As you can see, I am ‘blogging.’ It is something that I thought about for years, except all the time there was - and still is - a resistance in me to actually doing it. It is not that I have nothing to say - for I like to think I have. Rather it is a deep-rooted distaste for the implications of the process in general.

Blogging, like so much else in the world, is inextricably linked with ego. We write, we speak, we perform – less because we have some vital truth to convey than to be admired, to shine, to test the strength of our influence.

And this is what causes a resistance in me: the idea that I might still share that desire to be admired – or even worse, that the world might view me as sharing it. There was a time when, of course, I did share it. But I like to think that that was long ago. But this belated stagger into blogging makes me ever the more suspicious of my own motivations. If I thought that at root I was writing to be praised or admired or ‘understood’ or any such thing, I would abort the whole thing now.

To repeat: I like to think that I am writing because I have something important to say and that needs to be heard.

Of course, it is impossible to exile ego completely – there are any number of back doors through which it can come sneaking in. If there are hiatuses in this journal – which undoubtedly there will be – it is less because I have nothing to say than proof of an ongoing struggle against the temptation to be clever purely for cleverness’ sake.

Either that - or the decision to choose just silence for silence’s sake.