I’ll tell you something I learned from writing a blog: introductions are important.   Granted, from the readers’ side, it’s only been a few weeks, but it’s been a bit longer on this end.   Days get away from you, then, suddenly, the week is over, and you’ve missed your opportunity to post.   Sure, you could post on a different day, but that, too, screws up your plans.   Now, your repeated chants of “this week” turn into months of blank page and wasted money.
          “Just start it,” you say to yourself.   “Just start it.”
          I’m sure new bloggers worry about all sorts of problems when starting out, like I did.   The biggest problem I had wasn’t the name of the blog or how I wanted it to look.   Those things just, sort of, work themselves out a little at a time.   I knew the vein of topic also.   The name always helps to keep me on subject.   My problem: I had a ration of ideas for blog posts, at first, but with all of them, they just weren’t opening blog material.
          It took me a long time to write my first blog, not the post itself, mind you, but the idea for it.   The actual post writing took about 40 minutes.   I didn’t, necessarily, want it to be perfect.   I doubted that would even happen.   I just wanted to make sure that it fit the space it was going to fill, that is, it was going to show to readers what to expect: an introduction.
          You have to set the tone from the beginning.   On some level, I knew this, but having done it successfully, I think, I had the realization: I just let it be itself.   I had already decided what the blog was going to be about when I chose the name of it.   I think a lot of those that start out, do so without a clear heading in mind.   That’s what makes it so tough.   They dance onto the stage with fireworks booming and symbols crashing only to fizzle out five minutes into the show.
          This ties into last week’s post, somewhat. For those that want to start a blog, it’s simple.   Just start it.   It’s not going to be perfect.   I can almost promise.   That’s okay, though, because it doesn’t need to be.   Break out the old, army surplus compass and point yourself in a direction.   Start with the name.   Even a three-ring circus has a ringleader, whom brings the audience’s focus to a point before he introduces the juggling clown on a unicycle, spraying seltzer at the front row.   Sure, you could start with something like that, if you wanted, but, could you keep it up?