Blogginspired!

I am pathologically lazy. I cannot focus on working on a project till I finish it. I start out good then I finish really bad. This blog has been my nth attempt at putting up one. I've always wanted to have one because some of the brilliant ideas and insights I have (emphasis on some) are really good and I regret not putting them in writing. Anyway, I can't really tell if they're good because they have not seen the light of blog-day.

So, today I made a resolve to stick to writing an entry a day. I changed the name of this blog from "Medias Res," indicating how I wanted to get away from the boring task of introducing myself and giving a sweeping account of my lost blog years and instead jump right into the heart of action, to "Blog A Day" subtitled with something that reminds me my best years are not forever (but if you watch the movie Proof you'll be depressed when you reach 23 and you haven't really achieved anything substantial, at least.)

I got the inspiration of this blog's new title from another blogger. I'm not a stalker of this particular blogger, but his blog subheading caught my attention and got me started writing this entry regardless of its incoherence or lack of style. After reading an entry of his entitled "The Value of Work," I just wanted to hit the keyboards and start blogging away. I didn't think much about the correctness of my words, I just wanted to thaw my brain and write things down.
One of the reasons that keeps me from writing regularly is my pathetic perfectionism. My inner critic appears to be greater than me. Every a word I write gets criticized before they even get typed. My words are like flimsy snowflakes that disappears before they touch the ground. I correct and edit myself too much to the point that I end up not writing anything. It is really emabrrassing, but after swearing to myself that would no be ashamed of anything about myself, I'm gonna spew them here: I've been meaning to create a blog since I was in third year college, and that was four years ago. Imagine the amount of thoughts and ideas that slipped away. I could have written a book in that four years!

But, like what Paul says in the Bible, we have to forget the past things and reach forward to what's ahead of us. So, I'm going to finish this entry no matter what because that's what's ahead me, it always has been there. I was just too lazy to act and too scared to make a mistake. But, now that I'm nearing a quarter of my life (if I get to live tomorrow), I can feel the days slipping fast. I don't want to live with regrets. I want to make things happen.
So, cheers to this revived blog and I hope to see you from this day on. Blog a day! Blog away!
To infinity and beyond!

Definition of Terms

“The morning of June 27th was clear and sunny with the fresh warmth of a full-summer day…” So begins Shirley Jackson’s gruesome story. This perhaps is one of my favorite stories of all time—a tale that begins innocently with a small town lottery then unfolds to become an unforgettable story of death.

But this won’t be about lotteries, or death, or how later I would find out that Shirley Jackson wrote a book called The Haunting which was turned into a movie that begins with a mansion on a dark hill one stormy night.

This is about how stories in general taught me to begin where the action is. I know, sunny summer day is far from action packed, but that’s not the point. The point is that I don’t want to begin with my birth mother, my address and my phone number.

Imagine that this page is pitch black and you are in it. The place is called Normandy and the year is 1944. You were told that today is D-Day and that you are to proceed with your orders, no matter what, the moment your feet touch the ground. Mid-air you think about how you will go about this order when landing on your two feet is as improbable as propelling yourself up back the plane.

Now, that’s medias res. That is how I should proceed. Turn to page 2.