New year, new blog

2010-03-01T23:16:00.000-05:00

(Full disclosure: I've never actually started a new blog simply because it's a new year before ;)

Also, I wrote the first draft of this post on January 1st, when the title more closely referenced the 'new year' time frame. March still counts as the 'new year', though...right?*)

(Sprinkled throughout this introduction to thanksblog - to break up the following blocks of boring, letter-constructed...things - are examples of the non-text (=not boring) type items I will regularly share with you here. These were compiled from stuff I currently have cluttering up my desktop (they having resided there - un-digitally-filed, for this exact intention - to remind me to post/blog about them ;) Enjoy!)

The idea for this new web log - or 'blog', as the kids call them - found it's way into my brain on Thanksgiving of this past year while I - and most people around me/many citizens of our country - was trying to meditate upon what I was truly thankful for in this life, as well as what I wanted to do with that thanks and what I wanted to do with my life in general (the latter being something that is continually on my not-thankful-enough-for-what-I-have-already mind).

Example #1: (Internet standard #1 ;) Pictures of funny/adorable animals and/or children (be they friends' or strangers'). (The above happens to cover all the bases: I've not actually met little Hazel yet, but her parents and their dog (who I am acquainted with ;) are, clearly, funny AND adorable :)

A great deal of my waking hours are spent on this blessing/curse we know as the internet, and probably anyone reading this could tell you that I love the many wonderful and sundry things I come across in my daily surfings and that I, like plenty of others, regularly post links to and images of said things in various forms on Facebook...or awkwardly show them to/watch them with you while we could be spending quality time together in many another fashion :( As a result of this - and for several other reasons, I'm sure - I am - also probably unsurprisingly to you, dear reader - often heard lamenting my lack of discipline in the area of personal art creation and general non-internet-based productive, life/character-building activities.

Example #2: Interesting/creative/amazing/humorous videos, many of the animated variety.

SO, in an effort to remedy both said awkwardness AND not-thankful-enough-ness, the idea began to form of a simple blog (with not so simple wording, as you may have noticed) where I could spew/share all these thoughts, internet findings, and the (hopefully more-than) occasional artistic endeavor while always ending on a note of sincere thanks (though sometimes preceded by a bit of the more sarcastic type). This, I realize, is the reasoning behind and aim of many (/all?) blogs, but I am trying to not be too hard on myself and to allow my overly verbose tendencies and feelings of 'it's all been said before, better, and, man, I wish the writings of a guy my age didn't read like I'm still in junior high school' fall by the wayside and just get out here and DO it.

Example #3: Sweet artwork from others who inspire me (usually, but not limited to, comic/cartoon or film-based).

Having said all that, here goes my latest attempt at an all-inclusive, free-form blog that will hopefully - for all our sakes - hone my wordsmithery to a more economic level and entertain/inform/stimulate you while spurring me on towards greater artistic/productive output and reminding myself exactly how much I (and many of us) have to be thankful for.

Example #4: My own artwork (also usually comic or film-based, also usually self-or-friend-caricature/portraiture, also often drawn on napkins ;)

*And so today, MARCH 1st of the year (holy CRAP is it already) 2010, I am thankful for the slightly warmer weather and the absence of terrible, dirty SNOW covering the city. The streets have never seemed so wide (and I lived in CHICAGO for 5 years, people) and welcoming to me as I biked around today. So thanks, global warming. Thglobal warming. :)

Thanks also to you, for reading.

I hope you've had/are having a great day,

and please check back here soon for some less wordy and delightful things :)

'Til then,
~Ethan

Please and Thanksblog

New year, new blog