Editor’s note: I wrote this post when I wanted to call the website “Abundance of the Heart” however while I have since changed the name of the blog, I left the post as active as it still gives some useful insights into the website.
The question is why start a blog in 2019, the age of content, where there is literally too many shows and books and comics and films and audio books and just a plethora of opinions between all the many platforms we have at our disposal. Genuinely what will I have to say that will be any different from anything anyone else has already said? I also personally wonder why anyone would create a blog when I genuinely don’t think I have seen a new blog since like 2007.
A few reasons come to mind.
Creativity. From the point of obtaining my own personal computer through to the point where my young adulthood was crushed by the common responsibilities and commitments of regular adulthood, I was a VERY creative person. Dig on the internet hard enough and you’ll find artworks, podcasts, YouTube video, music covers, comic strips and a long running blog all mostly created within the depths of a confused teenager’s mind. This creativity was an outlet. I got to express my personal experiences through comic strip characters I created, I expressed my favorite songs through my terrible singing voice, and I got to express personal opinions to people, although limited the audience, people who genuinely wanted to hear them.
Creative writing. Loosely tied into the last point, I have always had a mind which has yearned wanted to write. See the aforementioned comic strip and blog examples. The comic I wrote allowed me to stretch what narrative muscles I had. The blog allowed me to express views on (mostly) popular culture, as that’s what I base my life around, however also express genuinely thoughtful opinion pieces on the current world that made up my life. It’s been a number of years since I have done anything of the creative sort and I find myself really wanting to write. This newfound desire reminded me of a moment when I was around fifth grade. We were given a creative writing assignment, I was young and due to either my young mind not knowing any better or the teacher’s expectations on the subject matter, I was reprimanded in front of the class because my story was too dark. Looking back I feel it was probably wrong for my version of creativity to be shut down so that my product could look like every other story produced by my fellow sheep. So along those lines, I am going to start learning creative writing and also hopefully adding content on this web page pertaining to that new hobby.
Why the name of the blog? Look, the name is probably pretentious but I honestly believe every creative thing I do is an outward expression of the absolute plethora of nonsense causing my innermost being to overflow on a near daily basis. There’s also some influence from the biblical passage Matthew 12:34 which says "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." I know that passage is referring to speech that is ‘evil’ howeeeeeeever, I am totally cool taking this passage and using it to say hey, out of the abundance of the heart can come some genuinely uplifting, thought provoking and creative things. Abundance of the Heart is also the name of the book-instagram I have been running which is linked elsewhere on this site.