Let there be.

Beginnings are hard. That first word on the page, that first awkward conversation with someone, the first day at the new job. You want to give the right impression, you want to say the right things, show that you’re something unique.

I had an art teacher who once told me to paint my canvases all one color before I started painting. I was apprehensive about making a mistake; canvases were expensive, and I had little money to spend on pricey art supplies. "Paint it all a light color," he said, "Baby blue or pink or green, just to cover up all that white, so it doesn’t seem like you’re starting new."

"It tricks your brain," he said. "Your mind is an idiot, it looks at all of that white and sees all of the mistakes it can make, not all of the possibilities it has. If you cover it with your own color and your own brush-strokes, it’s easier to start."

And it was.

This is a blog about language: the things that people say and the stories that they have to tell. Edward Sapir once remarked that "Language is the most significant and colossal work that the human spirit has evolved." Yes, but how are we using it?

This is a place where you will find both the profound and the profoundly stupid, because there is something to be learned from both. This is a place where you will find oral stories that merit from their recording. You will find quotes and dialogues, and humor intertwined with astuteness. Our language tells so much about who we are as people, and that, in and of itself, is a lodestone of diversity, curiosity, and interest.

This is my beginning.
My mind is an idiot, I first had to put down a layer of color before I could jump in.

Now I can paint.