Nothing Extraordinary...

I've only been thinking about starting a blog for years... here are a few things that have kept me:
- I don't have very strong opinions about things, I have ideas and preferences and beliefs, but don't have strong opinions, any thought well communicated has an impact on me...
- On a somewhat related note, maintaining a blog for me is like writing a diary, which is typically not meant for others to read. And somehow expecting and desiring for others to read your diary and for it to evoke interaction seems to me to be pretentious.
- I used to write as a child, and the motivation was always to receive kudos... I've written poetry, even thinking about which makes me cringe a little. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't really bad or anything (I do think about it nostalgically sometimes), it was just trying a little too hard to live up to expectations and I've stopped writing ever since the realization struck me. (btw, I'm not sure how much I will be able to counter this intrinsic need to be accepted in this stint... but I genuinely want to try)
- The ever-lingering doubt that very few people actually care about what I think...
- For a long time now, I've only written very corporate sounding presentations, and while I don't believe I've mastered that art either, it's definitely taken a bit of effort to write those well, and so you will have to pardon me if my very informal blog posts start sounding corporate at some point, sprinkled with many 'howevers', 'informatives', 'criticals' and 'problematics', :)

I'm however (:)) trying it out... and there are more than one reason for that too, and since I'm determined to rant about most things in this space from now on, here I go with the reasons:
- I enjoy words, and I want to explore my own ability to play around with these very expressive elements to express myself.
- I am not too much of a talker, and one will seldom catch me voluntarily telling people how I feel. But I've realized that expression of one's feelings can be very liberating, as thinking alone can be taxing and overwhelming. And a human being's mind usually is like this very entangling web, thoughts come and go, and it may be good to document some of these for future reference (another one of those corporate sounding sentences I'm afraid)
- I'm inspired. I've read some really riveting blogs, and feel like I'll be missing out if I don't try it out myself.
- I have interests like watching films, theatre, reading books, trying out different kinds of food, traveling and it's possible that I write about some of these things. Even discussions around these excite me, and a blog entry may arouse some interesting discussion. So, I don't intend for it to be only like a diary, but a space for me to express myself, and obviously I want my friends to read it if no one else, :)

So basically, I will be dumping my thoughts here, so that they don't dump me. I hope to discover that it is not all in vain and also that I remain in it enough to keep on.