On The Process of Starting a Blog (And the Various Factors Affecting This Decision)

January 2, 2009: Training Trip Day -3

I have something of a love/hate relationship with writing.

I like to think of myself as a creative person. I enjoy drawing though I'm rubbish at it, I enjoy making music though I'm too lazy to practice to keep my musical abilities sharp, and I enjoy writing to the point where I like transcribing my crazy thoughts to paper, or at least to a computer file. The problem is that writing creatively, just like doing anything else, is difficult. Coming up with things to writing is the fun part. The not-so-fun parts is actually writing those things.

Being a history major has hindered my ability to write for enjoyment. I do so much writing for school, I find it hard to make myself sit in front of a computer screen and spit out ideas when I'm not trying to get a grade for it.

This past semester, however, I was able to write for my own enjoyment a few times. This took the form of a bizarre, nonsensical Facebook rambling where I announced my candidacy for Oberlin College's Student Senate (without, of course, getting my name on the actual ballot which would just be silly). I sent it out, expecting my friends to be like "oh that crazy Dan, always saying crazy things with his craziness".

Instead, I got extremely positive feedback and became the reigning expert on the inner workings of the Student Senate for some friends of mine.
They'd ask, "So Dan, if you're running for Student Senate, do you know what it does?"
And I'd say, "Absolutely not."

In the end, I won the write-in ballot with an astounding twelve votes, putting me only 100-odd votes below the threshold for election onto the Student Senate. The runner-up of the write-in was then-Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin. Obviously the loss to me shattered Mrs. Palin's self-confidence and directly impacted the result of the 2008 Presidential Election.

Bolstered by this success, I wrote a few other Facebook ramblings (one of which lead to me being called a "meathead jock", which is my favorite way to describe myself these days). And I found that I genuinely enjoyed writing these silly rambling posts.

At Oberlin, for the month of January, we have a "Winter Term" where instead of taking classes, we work on a project of some sorts, which can take a myriad of forms. Friends of mine go home and do unpaid internships. Others go to foreign countries for aid work. Others stay at Oberlin and take a class or put on a play or sing in a choir. These are the more rational Winter Term projects. I know of people who have grown out their beards, attempted to make snowshoes, or wanted to make a trebuchet. I even know of a kid who stopped talking as their Winter Term project, communicating with a note pad for the month of January. The sky is the limit for these projects.

As a winter athlete, I knew I wanted to do something simple for my project, as I'd have to stay in Oberlin and practice in January. My recent enjoyment of writing made me think of the idea of a daily blog, where I would write whatever the heck I want for my own enjoyment.

I pitched this idea to my swim coach and potential Winter Term Advisor, Mark 'Danger' Fino. He was in favor of the idea, but also gave me a counterproposition: I also write a blog detailing my expierences of our early-January annual Florida training trip. Not being one to stand down from a challenge put forth by Mark Fino, I accepted his offer.

This blog is a challenge for me in a few ways: Not only will I have to devote valuable sleeping time in Florida to compsing blog entries, but I'll have to refrain from my beloved wackyness and concentrate on more composed writing in order to properly document the Winter Term life.

I also thought to myself, "I'll probably have to start a few days before training trip in order to properly convey the full Florida Trip expierence." Which is why I'm writing today.

So I ask you, the potential reader, to join me on this adventure. Training trip is sometimes fun, most often mind-bendingly difficult. But it's a very interesting expierence, and I'd like to share it with you. And maybe next time I'll even talk about swimming a little bit. We'll see.