Heresy?

Truth be told I'm preoccupied by something else at the moment, something rather more weighty than anything I'm going to discuss for the moment. Maybe that will change, maybe I'll need to find a venue to lay out my thoughts, like I'm bouncing inner demons off the rag dolls I'll hang up to represent the readers this blog will probably never have.

How do you express an idea to the world, so that it's out there, so that you can feel free of it, without anyone else reading it?

I know that goal thoroughly defeats the point of a blog; perhaps its even heretical when it comes to the blogosphere. If I'm not writing this to put out my thoughts and beliefs, what am I putting out there? Heresy and Heresay? That's just a title that it took me far too long to come up with. I fell back on good, solid, reliable alliteration. You can't go wrong with it, any more than you can go wrong if you use a pencil.

I am not in the habit of using pencils. I like to use pens and make mistakes. I like to throw myself in at the deep end, fish myself out of any seaweed that I might find there, and then learn from my actions, so that I don't repeat those mistakes.

This time I'm being conservative, not because it goes against my better judgement, but because my judgement is overwhelmed. I dipped a toe in the water earlier this evening. There is an outside chance that I attracted a shark. Too late now though, my toes in the water, and I can't seem to pull it out.

We'll see what the fallout from that is later, if there is any. My baited toe may catch nothing. That might be even more painful.

As I was contemplating this blog I thought of a lot of other reasons to write it. I want tell you the world about the joys of Fantasycon 2011, and drag some of you next year. I want to remember how Brighton felt like another country. The sun, the people, the beach... and I went to St Andrews! I thought nowhere had a more eclectic bunch. And I've seen 1 or 3 beaches in my time. Brighton does beaches like Bioware does story-heavy rpgs. Geocaching is great there too, loads hidden in a fairly small area near the seafront.

At some points along the way I will review things too. Like Picus the Thief (obtained at Fantasycon) – First Impressions: A fantastic foundation concept and three moments in the first 50 pages that made me squee and point avidly at the page. Aside from that, despair. Where was the polished prose, the snappy dialogue! I cringed, hard. Twice. Or more.

So why write this at all?

Because I met people, and decided that it was time to listen to some other views, besides my own. How does a blog fit into that, I ask myself (not expecting that as yet anyone else is here to ask the question). Well, if I'm putting my views into the public domain I'm going to have to learn to accept other views. If I want people to acknowledge my values, then I need to acknowledge theirs. When you are one voice in a small environment, you don't have to worry that no one sees as you do, but if I am to put that small voice into the cacophony that is the blogosphere, I will have to temper it, and in so doing, hope to temper myself as well.

Can I be more tolerant? Can I be more trusting, forgiving or accepting? Can I grow in wisdom, because of the restraints I place upon my own words?

I suppose we'll see.