Monday, February 7, 2011

What This Blog is For

I've never had patience in this kind of thingblogs, diaries, journals, etc. I guess it's because I have always started these out of boredom, and as soon as I had something else on my mind, I forgot about these things. However, boredom wasn't always the only factor leading to such activities. There were always other things that made me have the urge to write my thoughts and opinions down, such as doing bad in school or reading other people's wonderful blogs. This time, there's no exception. My English class just ended with semester one and I thought it'd be good to continue what I did in the English class.

For one of the assessments in English class, each person in the class chose a book from a book-list given out by the teacher, and had to complete five reading journals. These reading journals were supposed help us have a better understanding of the book we chose, and we could write whatever we wanted—whatever we thought was important. At first, this assignment/project seemed like one of those annoying and meaningless tasks, but after I completed it, my opinion changed. It really made me thought about the book as I spent hours and hours trying to think of something meaningful to me in the text. I also had to describe my thoughts in a way that was simple enough for people to understand. At the end, in addition to the good mark I got,  I also got a lot of other things out of this assignment/project. This is a feeling that I rarely have.
 
I think the main difference between the reading journals and all the other school work I got was that it allowed me to continue to think the same way even after it was done. For example, when walking in the streets I would suddenly analyse a specific event, action or object as if it were a book and as if I had to write a journal about it. I would begin to try to phrase the description of the thing in my head, and try to explain the significance in it.

The thinking had come to the point where I actually wanted to try to write the thoughts down— to write them down in a blog. Writing them down not only allows me to think through them more thoroughly, but also allows me to enhance my writing skills (which is very much needed). I really do hope that I can benefit from writing this blog.
 
Last note, in case you haven't figured out yet, this blog is named Random Stuff because the things I think about can be quite random. Also, as I said earlier, this blog is created partly to practice my writing. Therefore, if you find mistakes of any kind— grammar, spelling (unlikely, because I have spell check) mistakes, or even just poor-connectivity or bad arrangements of sentences and/or paragraphs— it will be very great if you just tell me what you think should be changed (just make a comment).