A NEW NEW BEGINNING

I've had a love-hate relationship with blogging pretty much since MySpace was a thing. I loved finding unique layouts and would spend hours and hours customizing and personalizing my profile page. And then in middle school I discovered Live Journal and found myself in the same spot as Harriet the Spy after my friends found my "secret" blog. Later in my high school years I became a Tumblr junkie. I wasn't a fan of "reblogging" and instead insisted on creating my own original content. Thus, my second real "blog" baby was born. However, after four faithful years on Tumblr I just wasn't feeling it anymore. It didn't really seem to function like a blog anymore and it wasn't easy enough for a reader to access your posts. The network was too fast-paced and I grew tired of the format. I took on Blogger/Blogspot (my current platform) in my senior year of high school but could never really find a topic I wanted to say anything about consistently. So I wiped my slate clean, deleted all my posts, and tried again in my freshman year of college. But again, the problem of finding something to continue to talk about that wouldn't end in boredom seemed to keep resurfacing. And that brings me to today. Here I am yet again, having wiped everything clean yet again, trying my hand at this thing called blogging yet again.

Now you might be thinking, Well, what makes this time any different? To be honest, maybe nothing. But I *think* I may have unearthed a reason as to why blogging has failed to keep me satisfied in the past seven years. Simply because I thought I had to have a theme. Some kind of topic that I could discuss the ins and outs of. Something I could become an expert in. But I guess I realized recently that that mindset just doesn't come naturally to me. Take for instance my degree. I'm currently studying graphic design at California Institute of the Arts. But what got me to choose that degree was the fact that design is a multidisciplinary discipline. As a designer you have to have multiple tricks up your sleeve. And to me, those "tricks" are various mediums and styles. You have to be able to use a variety of mediums whether that means different programs - Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Final Cut Pro, etc. - or different physical materials - screen printing, paints, photography, cardboard, inks, sewing, etc. You also have to be able to produce work in different styles depending on what your client wants or what your project is. But I guess that's what I find so interesting and unique about design. You're constantly switching it up and trying new things and picking up new disciplines to add to your collection, your hat of tricks.

So in the same way, this time around I think I'll try to blog the way I design. Anyway, this concludes my introductory remarks to this feeble attempt at blogging.