Perhaps A Bit Ambitious

Welcome to my blog! I’ll spare the long introduction, because that’s what my About page is for. Instead, here’s why I’m a bit crazy for starting a blog.

Firstly, it’s currently past 2am (by the time I publish this post, I’m sure it’ll be past 3). I know both from personal experience and from Season 1 of How I Met Your Mother that nothing good happens after 2am. That’s just a fact of life.

Secondly, I know that one of my flaws is that I start too many things. I know a lot of people struggle with this, but I seem especially prone to cling to novelty. New things are undeniably exciting. My room at my parents’ house is a mess of half-finished projects that are, to be completely honest, more half-empty than half-full.The huge package of embroidery thread from my friendship bracelet phase in freshman year of high school, the countless notebooks that have writing on the first ten or so pages but don’t continue beyond that.

Recently I learned how to knit and became addicted, but since I am now more conscious of my tendency to acquire hobbies with a gusto that doesn’t last, I resisted going nuts and buying every color of yarn at JoAnn’s. I’m rather proud of myself, considering that my two biggest temptations are sales and the desire purchase items in every color.

Thirdly, where exactly am I supposed to find the time to blog? Sure, right now starting a blog seems, in the words of my English teacher senior year, rad. You know why? I’m still on winter break, my best friend already went back to school, and for the first time in three years I don’t have either schoolwork to complete over break or a job that demands my presence. So yeah, while I’ve got all the time in the world, a blog is great. But where will it fit in when I return to college? Who knows.

But I wouldn’t be doing this if I only saw flaws in it.

Little Sabina in all of her third-grade glory.

I’ve always been a storyteller. Imaginative play was my thing as a kid (bowl cuts and turtlenecks were also apparently my thing, but that phase is long gone). As soon as I could read, I was writing stories and poems. I wrote fan fiction before I knew that it was a genre. Third grade Sabina spent the lonely afternoon hours exploring worlds both realistic and mystical through developing dynamic characters to carry out her intricate plots. Junior high, however, squashed all motivation and ability to write creatively. Essays analyzing great works of literature prohibited the first person point of view, and writing was no longer a hobby but rather seemed more like work. It wasn’t fun anymore, so I stopped.

In November 2013, a few friends and I decided to do “NaWriMoThUsMo,” our parody of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). None of us had the time or capability to write a novel, so we instead aimed for “National Write More Than Usual Month.” My personal goal was to write something each day in November, whether a poem, a flash fiction piece, part or all of a short story. I lasted 5 days. But those 5 days were significant to me: the drive to write was back.

Blogging interests me because I already have a similar outlet–video blogging (vlogging) on YouTube. I make videos about a range of topics, from general life observations and stories to book reviews to critiques of current events and media. My blog will have a similar range, and in fact may overlap in subject matter with my vlogs. Vlogs allow me to talk freely without editing my thoughts too much, and thus my videos represent my more surface level, initial reactions, but blogging provides me a way to get deeper into ideas and (perhaps) be more coherent and cohesive. It also lets me embed photos and videos. It’s simply a different format, and one that I am excited to experiment with.

So I’m starting now. It’s new and ambitious, but I wouldn’t be a HIMYM fan if I didn’t occasionally find myself casually quoting Barney Stinson–so here’s to it. Challenge accepted.