A Change in Direction

So, a bit over 2 years ago, I hiked half of the Appalachian trail. It was over 1,000 miles in about 3 months, and it was a blast.

Despite my initial intentions to do the whole blasted thing in panic-like rush before graduate school started in the fall of 2013, alas, I am only human.  I had to settle for half. I walked from Georgia to West Virginia, and then headed home to pick up again the day-to-day routines of life as a student.

In the end, though, I was a much happier camper, once I began to focus on the experience  rather than the goal. Because, wasn’t the goal all along to have an wicked awesome and freeing experience? To prove to myself that I could do something difficult and independent? To get really, really stinky?

It was awesome.

In my time since, I’ve found that taking time to collect one’s thoughts is a rarity in the “real world”. In the woods, all you have is time and your thoughts for entertainment.

In that vein, I want to make this blog pretty much a place where I can just write. Mainly for myself. To help me collect my thoughts. And for fun.

My mother was an English major in college, and imparted a love of words and of books at an early age to my brother and I. I would take extra elective English classes in high school and in college because, hey, its fun to read and write essays! Some of my friends thought I was nuts when I decided to take 2 extra English electives in high school “for fun”.

I’ve found that I’ve missed the creative outlet that reading and writing has given me, and that as an ADULT now, I have to make time for the things that I like to do. Sometimes, that is a really, really hard thing to do.

So, this blog is for me now. Not for you. Feel free to unsubscribe, you Michael Hikes the Appalachian Trail followers! You won’t hurt my feelings.

But if you want to continue getting self-reflective crap like this in your inbox from me, feel free to read it! I promise at least sometimes it will be interesting. I’ll be updating about my life, stuff I read, things I am doing, my musing on current events, and whatever the hell else I feel like writing about.

Again, this is for me. So sometimes, it will be weird. Sometimes, it will be entirely a conversation that I had in my head. Sometimes it will be random fiction that I write. Sometimes daydreams.

But, dear readers, fear not! For this is THE INTERNET! You can do whatever you like.