Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

As I approach what I assume (and can only hope) will be the midpoint of my life, I’ve been reflecting more on what I will leave behind. I’ve always wished that I had more knowledge/information about previous generations of my family so the idea came upon me to start documenting significant events in my life, and a journal about the Appalachian Trail seemed to be the easiest place to start. I do cool things sometimes and rather than just take pictures I’d like to have something more organized to share with family and friends and mostly for future generations of my family to look at when I’m gone. Kind of like an online time capsule I guess. I had an online journal once but I don’t know what happened to it. It was on a site called livejournal. I kind of miss it and hopefully I can use this as a continuation of that journal. I have some pretty awesome hobbies and I’d like to share thoughts along with my photos. I think it will be fun to one day look back and see how things have evolved. I’m a pretty private person so exposing myself like this feels a bit awkward but hopefully it’s worth it. I’ve got no experience at this sort of thing so any suggestions are welcomed. My mom always said I was a good writer! Mike Culnan told me about twenty years ago that I should start a website and learn how to code. I should’ve listened to him. Hopefully in addition to hiking this can be used to document my progress as a guitar player, skier, parent, concert goer, traveler, homebrewer, etc. Again, it’s completely self-serving but that doesn’t mean I’m not open to suggestions. I’m definitely not out to impress anyone or rise to the top of the seventeen million other bloggers with mindless musings. This will likely be just a hodgepodge of thoughts mindlessly strewn together in a somewhat accidentally organized fashion. It will probably be too wordy and boring for most readers… but “most readers” aren’t my target audience. If anything I say, share, or post on here offends anyone or violates any rules or laws and could potentially get me or someone else in trouble please bring it to my attention. Pardon my ignorance.

I hiked some miles in northern Virginia at the beginning of the year and after that I started listening to Mighty Blue’s podcast from his AT thru hike last year. I’m not sure I’m ready for a video blog or a podcast yet but I think that might be what inspired me to get started with this idea. I’m approaching the six hundred mile mark on the AT and don’t have any sort of organized record of my travels, which I feel like some people (at least my parents) would probably be interested in.