So the natural question is: what is this and why am I doing it? What I will try to do is write about a page or so (which I seem to remember from English class, that's about 250 handwritten words) each day, probably about a particular subject. These will be my personal observations and opinions, not necessarily right or wrong, but mine.

Why am I doing this? That's a harder question. Maybe it's attention, maybe I want people to read this and find it entertaining (althouth why that should be, since I don't advertise my personal web site, I just don't know). I suppose I could start with a little anecdote that might explain my thinking better.

When I was in eighth grade, attending middle school in Sacramento, California, my English teacher made us write in a journal. Each day we would come in and write for ten minutes, at least a page, on anything we wanted. Nobody was going to read this, none of it would be graded (other than the fact that you wrote something). As she explained it, this was a chance for us to be creative, practice writing, and maybe find out a little more about ourselves.

Well, some people took it seriously, some took it not so seriously, I was somewhere in between. Back then I had nothing I wanted to put down in writing, so I started this little two-page D&D magazine (that was *the* role-playing game back then) wherein I wrote short scenarios, campaign stories, descriptions of monsters, classes, magic items, anything that came to mind in those ten minutes. At the end of the year I had quite a lot of material, mostly rather juvenile and worthless today, but I think it did help me a little back then.

So why am I writing this (again back to the question)? Today, as in those days so long ago, I think I need to practice writing. There are so many people who can't write properly, can't spell worth a darn, can't communicate in the written form (and I may be one of them). The more you write the better you get, so here I am.

As a second objective, I need to express my creative side by writing what comes to mind. In the past few years, I've come to the opinion that we, as a society, need to encourage creativity and creative endeavors. You can teach people how to read, how to write, how to communicate, how to express themselves. But you can't teach creativity. People have to want to create to be creative.

For better or worse, I've stopped being critical of other people's creative endeavors. Well, that's not quite right. I've stopped being *publicly* critical. People can write poetry, songs, stories, whatever, and whether I like it or not, I will say a few good things and encourage that kind of work. Sometimes I try to be subtle about what a person can improve, but I won't knock them down (exception: close friends). I believe a bad writer can improve, but not if they're scared to write for fear of ridicule.

A third reason why I'm going to do this is it'll help me reflect on who I am. Introspection is something that I've always avoided. There are so many things bottled up and hidden inside me. Now is as good a time as any to get to know myself better. Self- actualization or whatever it's called.

I can't think of any other reasons right now, but I'm sure there are a few others lurking somewhere. In the end, I'm doing this for me. Putting it up on my website is just an excuse to make myself do it. I don't think anyone else will ever read these pages (well, I can think of one or two people), but if you are reading this, don't you have anything better to do?