i can hardly hear the echo of my own voice

There are be billions of people, all whispering to the people next to them, or shouting st the tops of thier lungs. Blogging isn't something that you do for other people: it's a way of expressing yourself. For instance, take photography: taking and selecting and viewing photos is an intensely personal matter. Why would you even think of putting them up onto something like Flickr? Why would you allow the whole world to see through your eyes, look at a snapshot of your feelings, view a matte print of your soul? For me, it's because there are so many people that my voice is lost, and only the people close to me can hear my voice. There's very little chance that some wayward wanderer of the internet will stumble across this blog and become a regular reader. And just like that, my voice is no longer lost in the din: only the people that need or want to hear me actually do.

But again, I am not blogging for anyone other than myself: like drawing, photography, biking, speaking, living... writing is just another way of articulating myself and understanding my own personal self.

Another reason for this futile endeavor, this meager collection of thoughts, these late-night ravings of a mad, mad, mind is that they are another way of exploring the world around me, another way of noticing the little details that make up our life. Just like photography strips away everything but what the photographer sees and highlights a single thought or emotion, just like drawing adds a stylized and personal interpretation of some idea or scene, so does writing. It just so happens that I (and many others) put this visual information into black-and-white squiggles.

If you look closely, a drawing is nothing but black-and-white squiggles. A photograph is nothing but little black-and-white dots. Just like I am nothing but a single voice in the crowd.

But that doesn't mean that if you step back, you won't be able to appreciate the single penstroke my voice adds to the masterpiece that is being created around us.