Thoughts in Conflict

Because I felt that the old name sounded lame, no matter how long I thought about it, for 2013 I am renaming my blog "Thoughts in Conflict." My second choice for the name was "Pro-style Nerd," but if I find that this title doesn't work for me either, I can always change it to that or something else. I will author another blog soon, most likely, for my study abroad experience in Copenhagen, so this blog has nerdery, politics, and other topics I decide to write about.

With that in mind, I looked back and realized that in the 3 or so months that I've had this blog, I've only posted 5 or 6 times. Not too impressive, especially considering my goal when I started was to write once a week at the least. What happened? Well, a lot of things really. I focused on schoolwork a fair amount, and came out of the semester with reasonably good grades (economics notwithstanding), but I ended up using my spare time more to play World of Warcraft and League of Legends than anything productive. As some of my readers may know the end of the semester was kind of unpleasant and at the very least filled with a lot of work, so my spare time became less about reading or writing and more about vegging out and relaxing. However, with the new year I realized it was time to recommit to writing again and offering something up. I don't plan on forcing myself to write every day, since I would wind up writing posts I wouldn't like and that you wouldn't want to read, but I should be on more often.

I also thought about it for a while, and a part of me in October thought, "Waah! I've written like five posts and I'm not the talk of the town! What gives?" My inspirations to start blogging are people who have YouTube channels and podcasts and books and all sorts of stuff. This was one of those moments where I had to step back and reassess what I was doing. These people have also been on TV and made movies, but they're all older than I am and do this for a living. Admittedly, there is a part of me that would love to make my living by playing video games or talking about nerd stuff, but my real calling is in the political sphere, so my blog remains a fun outlet, and as long as I get a few readers, that's great.

Okay, this post has been one giant pat-myself-on-the-back, and I swore I wouldn't be one of those bloggers who talks about themselves and expects everyone to be interested. That said, I don't have anything particularly exceptional to talk about. I will say, however, that this year will bring lots more blog posts, hopefully all of which will be worth your time, and possibly some "Let's Play"-style YouTube videos and/or a podcast-type deal too.

Happy New Year everyone!

To start the year off, here's a fun video of a Scandinavian band playing Brahms on a variety of "instruments" like a bicycle, skis, etc.