overture

Much to my own surprise, my original idea for this blog was ambitious. Something entertaining but subdued, brilliantly eloquent and dripping with wit, full of bizarre and exciting stories, or even mundane ones made interesting by my insightful remarks on everyday life, reminiscent of David Sedaris memoirs, immediately invoking the sound of Ira Glass's voice, and a number of other things that I won't say for fear of seeming a shameless "hipster." (I put this word in quotes because I think it too broad a category to warrant the kind of scathing/disdainful connotations it often draws from the public, not to defend those with disturbing and perplexing obsessions with facial hair. Gross.)

Realizing that this would never happen was like that time my friend's brother accidentally ran over her kitten with a car: sudden and heartbreaking. So I quickly whittled my expectations down to writing something that would maybe occasionally rival Ben West's travel blog, probably the best thing I've read by someone I know personally. By the time I was done whittling, I was left with the splinter of a hope that my closest friends would read this simply out of concern for my wellbeing. I quickly buried that splinter and accepted that only my mother actually cares that much, or at least, only she will care that much if my future posts end up being this unnecessarily verbose.

In any case, I've justified this inherently masturbatory exercise by laying down a few purposes for its existence and the continued spending of time on it:

- to preserve stories of my travels

- to prevent my writing from going to total shit
- to keep friends/family/any-annoying-fucker-who's-going-to-ask-a-lot-of-generic-and-unoriginal-questions updated on whatever it is I've been doing
- or maybe it's in the hopes that certain individuals (no, not you) will read it

You may have noticed that I have yet to write anything about my actual travels. I noticed that too.