I Love Beginning Things - An Introduction

It will be some time before anyone but Kate and I read these posts, I assume.  I'd like to think this blog might garner some sort of audience, but it's likely we'll be writing for ourselves for some time.  But in case we do pull in a few readers, or someone in the distant future recovers the bytes that make up this blog off of a hard drive in some decrepite, post-apocolyptic building that used to be a web-hosting company, I'll introduce myself.

My name is Jason, and in some ways I think I skew toward the negative.  I'm cynical for sure, probably a bit jaded, and sometimes a pessimist.  And from what I've seen, I'm not alone.  As a general rule it seems, humanity tends to notice and remember the bad things that happen to them more readily than the good.  This may be some sort of evolutionary survival mechanism.  It was likely more important for our stone age forebears to remember a sabertooth tiger's deadly fangs, and not its soft fur.  Whatever the cause, it would seem we are programmed to see the glass as half empty.

However, I suspect that this proclivity for the negative is more cultural than genetic.  I think it's a learned response to a dangerous world, and thus, a response that can be changed.  That's the purpose of this blog.

Each day for the entirety of 2009, Kate and I are going to write about one thing that we like. Most of our entries probably won't be revelatory.  Mine may revolve around liking pizza and "Dude, Where's My Car."  But some will delve a bit deeper.  The point is this.  By forcing ourselves, on a daily basis to find something positive, something good in the world, we force our minds to shift focus and see, as an immediate response, a half full glass of scotch, instead of a half empty one.  Assuming the experiment works, I'll celebrate by creating a few completely empty glasses of scotch.

So here's my first entry.  I like beginning things.  I like to have many projects going at once.  I often don't finish most of them, probably because it's the starting of the thing that entices me the most.  It's the adventure, the challenge, and the distraction.  I like that, in beginning something, you had no idea what the end is, or where it lies.  There's that heady euphoria that comes with beginnings, where all of your grand visions for your project still seem possible.  I love the hours of thought that go into planning and fantasizing, imagining where a particular project might lead, and the beginning of the project throws open the door for realization.

I like beginning things.