Everybody needs an introductory post, right?

Chances are, my eyes will be the only ones to check out this little pointless corner of cyberspace. But it's all good. I'm not here to change the world--I'm not here to turn lives around. If I wanted to do that, the time would have been some years ago when I was still a starry-eyed dreamer with a lot of time and energy on my hands. Blogging I think is what happens to starry-eyed dreamers when they lose the spark of energy that separates the wanna-be's from the has-been's.

Or at least that's the case in my particular situation.

Is it possible to be a starry-eyed cynic? That's probably how I would describe myself. Today, at least. Ask me again tomorrow, you'll most likely get a different answer. I suppose we'll see.

So there's your introduction. I suppose you can glean more information about me from the keywords in my little profile box off to the side than from this post. Lover of music, with leanings toward the indie folk-rock sound (think Scrubs soundtrack and you're just about there), though I know woefully little about the indie folk-rock scene. Lover of reading and writing, though I never allow myself the time to do much reading anymore (maybe 5 or 6 books a year), and this is really the first major attempt at writing that I've done in years. Lover of God, of the Mainline Protestant persuasion (despite popular opinion, there ARE some of us left, and a few of us actually take our faith seriously). Before we proceed any further, please don't take that last parenthetical statement to mean that I've got it all together, or that I'm some "holier-than-thou" nutjob--you'll most likely find VERY quickly that for me at least, taking my faith seriously doesn't mean living a perfect life. For me, it's an awareness that on the contrary I don't lead a very good life at all, and I have nothing else to lean on but the pure, unmerited grace of God.

But I digress.

Point is, some might label me a fake. All those keywords I have listed in my profile? Those are me to a T. There's probably more I might add as I think of them. The thing is, if you followed me for a week and came up with your own list of what you THOUGHT my keywords ought to be based on watching how I live my life, it would most likely be a very different list. Of course, there would be some intersections--I wear my love for my sports teams on my sleeve (sometimes very literally), I am a coffee fiend, etc.

But so many of my passions have been either forgotten about, pushed aside, or suppressed for one reason or another. I'm sure as we continue on our blog journey, many of those issues will come into the light. Or maybe not. So while many might label me a fake, I would take exception to that label and prefer to think of myself as waylaid.

It's not that I'm trying to be someone I'm not. It's that in many ways I haven't tried to be the person I really am. And if there's one discovery I've made along the way up to this point, it's that to be who you REALLY are...to be true to yourself...that takes work. It doesn't just happen. Much like in a relationship, if you are not intentional about putting time and energy into the things that you're passionate about, eventually you'll find yourself living a much different life than you've ever imagined...or wanted.

T.A.(P)D.