"Hello, my name is..."

Jim. Most of my friends call me that. Some of them also call me Styro. Or The Protestant. And some of them call me Captain Dick.

So, you can begin to form an impression right away, perhaps, of the sort of person I am, the sort of friends I have, whether or not I suffer from some sort of split personality disorder, and so on. I'm a man of many - or at least several - names. You stick with me and in due course I'll try to explain them all.

Since this my first blog post*, I offer the information as a form of both introduction and greeting. After all names can be important; I must believe that - or else why would I have spent so much time trying to pick one for this blog!** One of my desires was to come up with a name that would reflect my intention to offer posts in both spoken and written form. I was a part of the competitive speech team at my high school - and that experience provided me confidence, a sense of achievement and friendships that remain with me still.

Maybe I just like to hear myself talk.

One of the first names I had devised for this electronic repository (that's "re-pository" - not "sup-pository") was "Blogging for the Visually Impaired". Apart from being a bit cumbersome, I feared that people doing web searches would stumble upon the blog hoping to actually find content directed towards visually-challenged individuals - and disappointing first-time visitors didn't seem like a good way to win friends and influence people. "Blogging for the Blind" was punchier and had a nice alliterative quality - but I didn't like it enough to risk offending some folks.

I may still use "Blogging for the Visually Impaired" as a title for my forthcoming one-man show - patterned after a Spalding Gray monologue. Admittedly, the idea is in its VERY early planning stages; I would use my best blog posts in fashioning a (semi-)cohesive performance piece. If I thought I could copyright an idea this vague I would. And thank you so much for reminding me it's already been done.

Anyway, I feel this first rant coming to a close. I've been thinking about starting this blog for several months now. My wife (the Middle-Aged Woman of some renown - hey, at least I waited until nearly the end to name-drop) has been blogging for the better part of a year - and I've been known to post a comment or two in self-defense. Since she asked me to guest-post in December, I've been thinking more seriously. I had thought about posting on the first day of Spring - but somehow April Fool's Day seemed more appropriate. I must be a fool to think I can find the time to do this (in a manner that satisfies me - and may be of interest to others). But if I waited to find time, I probably wouldn't do most of the things that I enjoy doing.

If you think about it - we have all the time there is. But that's another post.

Take care.



*on my very own blog

** I was shocked at how many cool URLs are in use by individuals who last posted in 2005. Perhaps some sort of URL reclamation project is in order...