When I was 7 or 8, my sister and I stayed with one of my mom's friends during the day while she was on a mission trip to Russia. My dad had work during the day, so he'd drop us off for a day full of fun and games. It was a lot of fun, and it helped keep my sister and I occupied.I remember one particular day, we went to this swimming pool. Now, this was no ordinary swimming pool, no-ho-ho! This was an ENORMOUS pool. To be fair, I may be over-exaggerating the size of the pool because let's face it, I was just a kid, and everything seems enormous. But it was by far the largest one I'd ever been to outside of White Water.
The neat thing about this pool was that it had one particular area that was REALLY deep, and it being the 90's (before lawsuits were an everyday occurrence), there were two diving boards there. One of them was your average, run of the mill, "I-have-a-pool-in-my-yard-and-oh-look-a-diving-board-too" diving boards. But the other one...the other one was a high board. It towered above me, and I remember seeing and and firmly deciding, "Hey, I'm gonna go jump off that thing".
So up I climbed. Higher and higher and higher, until at last I reached the top. I walked to the edge and looked down, and I suddenly (and inexplicably) found myself staring down at a tiny cup of water at the base of Mt. Everest. I was petrified. If I hadn't used the restroom just before going, I'd have certainly gone up there. But I decided to suck it up, be a big-boy, and take the leap. I got a running start, then I jumped...
I know that story is a pretty terrible analogy for starting a blog, but in a way, it fits. It looks cool right up until you start to do it, and then you become petrified. Or at least, that's how it feels. "Why is that?" you may ask, and it would be a good question. Writing isn't scary. Writing doesn't physically endanger you. So why then is it scary?
To be honest, it's because I don't have to filter myself. In fact, that's something I'm promising myself not to do. I'm not going to censor myself to fit the standards other people may have in their minds for me. Now, that doesn't mean I'm going to be disrespectful to others. That doesn't mean I'm going to act contrary to how I normally do. I'm simply going to be me, and that's what's scary.
Whenever you open yourself up, you do just that: open yourself up. It leaves you vulnerable. People can attack you. People can twist your words and use them against you. It's happened before, and it'll most certainly happen again. But that's part of life, and I'm not afraid to take that chance. What scares me more is that now people will know exactly how random (and perhaps crazy) I actually am. Oh well.
I suppose I should formally introduce myself at this point. My name is Nicholas Bradford, but I prefer to be called Nick. I'm 21 years old, and knocking on the doors of turning 22 (5 more days as of the time of this writing). I'm a junior at Georgia Southern University, majoring in mechanical engineering. Some random facts about me:
- I love reading (Count of Monte Cristo wins everything)
- I've been an Alabama fan since I knew what football was (RTR!)
- I don't like raw tomatoes (except salsa...salsa is good)
- I have a passion for (good) video games
- I actually read the Twilight books (yes...yes I did)
- I sometimes write secret messages using binary (01010100 01001000 01000101 00100000 01000111 01000001 01001101 01000101)
- My favorite Bible verse is 2 Kings 2:23-24
That's a decent short-list for now. I'm sure that if you pay attention, you'll figure out more about me as I write more in this blog. In all honesty, I'll probably forget about it from time to time, but I'll try and update it as regularly as I have things to update. Until next time!
Nick
P.S. I lost my swimming trunks when I jumped off of the diving board. Here's to hoping this ends better!
No comments:
Post a Comment