From the beginning

I am currently at the beginning of many things.  I was married 11 days ago and so I am at the beginning of a new family and life as a husband.  I am at the beginning of a new semester of school which appears it will be the most difficult semester I will have as a student at BYU.  I am at the beginning of the process of applying to medical school.  And of course, I am at the beginning of my first blog.

When I was told in my business communication class that I would have to create a blog I was not excited.  I always saw blogs as an interesting mix of two things: (1) entertaining writings from a few people who actually had unique experiences worth sharing and (2) a whole lot of written reality shows where people tell the world about their very normal lives as if they were full of action and adventure.  I have always been sure that I would fall into the second category and have therefore found no reason I should ever write a blog.  On top of that I am no anywhere near an entertaining writer so I was sure my writing would do nothing more than bore and confuse anyone who read it.  So, when I was given the assignment to write a blog I groaned a little inside.

Then, I started thinking about what a blog is and could be.  A few of my realizations came from my professor.  It could be a great learning tool to get me experience at using another one of the many forms of social media important in our age.  It is also a way for me to train my mind to seek for things that I can learn from like and figure out how to apply them for change in my life.  Some other things I realized on my own as I thought about what I would write.  I realized that I may from time to time have a rather unique experience and a blog would be a way to share those experiences with others so that may glean some benefit as well.  I also saw it as a way to share my faith.  I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  My faith plays a bigger role in my life than just about anything else and I hope that will reflect in what I write in this blog.  If just one person who reads this blog gets just a little closer to Christ because of what they read than the whole thing will be worth it.  

As I thought about these things I decided that I was actually excited to write a blog and that I would do my best to make it a positive experience rather than a dreaded one.  I would try to make my blog interesting.  The prompt for the class for our blogs is "So what? Now what?"  In other words we are supposed to take something we learn each week (so what) and fin a way that we will apply it in our lives (now what).  For the next few months this will be the basis behind each of my blog posts.  After the class is over I may continue to follow the same idea or I may change my format.  We will see.  

For this week, my so what is that I learned that writing and reading a blog can be useful and a great experience if we go at it with the correct attitude.  My now what is what is right in front of you now and what you will read as I write.  I will make this blog something useful.  It may not be useful to anyone else but my but nevertheless it will be useful.  I am going to enjoy writing it.  I hope any who read it will enjoy it as well.