Hello World

Where to start?

I guess I’ll start it in the way I should have started everything I’ve done in life, but seldom have; with a prayer. “Please God, may this be A Good Thing”.

I’ve been considering starting a blog for a number of years, but never did it. I figured perhaps it was a bit self-indulgent, maybe vain, to do so; and perhaps it is. Nevertheless, I’ve felt increasingly the need to speak out on certain issues, to have a platform of some description, somewhere to keep it in one place. I trust that nobody is interested in what I had for dinner on Tuesday (pork stir fry) or the current status of my hair (a wild, Einsteinian freeform jumble sale of roaming, wayward threads all surging away from my cranium), but maybe I have something to say that will resonate with somebody somewhere.

I’m just some guy, perhaps you know me, perhaps you’ve stumbled across this blog whilst capering across this Internet. I’m a guy who wrestles, both literally and figuratively. I wrestle for sport, but most of the wrestling I do is of the the cerebral and emotional variety as I struggle with my faith, views on politics and world issues, and just the generally overwhelming nature of life on Planet Earth. I don’t want my life to be a blinkered blunder, clumsily rampaging head-down from day to day without any thought of wider issues or the needs of others.

So, here are some issues that are vital to me. These are things I particularly care about. They all scare me (sometimes this world makes me want to hide under the bed with my eyes shut tight picturing baskets of kitties and singing nursery rhymes). I plan to talk in more detail about them in the future. I write this list to challenge myself, to remember that I need to act wherever I can to help this world.

• no2id.net (dead link removed) – I’m vehemently against ID schemes, because I fear what they can become (for example, the possibility of RFID tagging human beings is utterly chilling to me)

• http://www.amnesty.org/ – human rights. I’ve recently woken up to the scale of the horrors in the world and am particularly moved by people imprisoned and persecuted for their beliefs. I want to help. First they came…

• Consumer ethics. I haven’t found a good site on this yet, and I really want to discover what products are the best to buy. I do not want to bring people suffering by my purchases, but increasingly I’m becoming aware that I do, and I need to address that.

Perhaps this post has made me sound like a po-faced know-it-all, perhaps with a greasy ponytail, trust fund, braying voice and manner of casual condescension, but I’d like to make it clear that I’m fully aware that I’m very ignorant. I suppose the purpose of this blog is to challenge myself to develop, to learn, to grow and above all to help.

So now all I have to do is hit “Publish Post”, and that’s it, I’m a blogger… Here we go…