Testing, testing, tap tap tap . . . [clears throat]. Um, okay, hello everybody, I’m starting a blog here. Less than a year ago I bought my first laptop. Less than a month ago I joined Facebook. I still don’t have a cell phone.

I’ve been writing, however, for a long time. I’m counting that first sappy poem I wrote at Christmas when I was eight years old, and all the painfully cliche but moments-of-brilliance songs and essays I’ve labored over since then.

But after all these years I still haven’t been discovered, hauled off to a publishing house or a record label by some undercover scout, and launched to stardom. What gives?

So, I’m laying aside my prima donna crown and joining the ranks of the common bloggers. Stepping out of my ivory tower to stand on the virtual street corner, adding my voice to the throngs of excellent, pretty darn good, average, promising and pathetic writers already there. I’m one of them, somewhere on the continuum, and we don’t need to decide just where right now.

Lately I’m a voracious student with a hungry mind, and discovering that the more I learn, the more I wonder. Ironically, I thought I had come up with that catchy little phrase – only to google it and discover the long line of smarties who used it before me, making it just another cliche.

Oh well, it’s still true, and the best I can say for now. It’s what I hope to write about here – the things I’m learning, the questions I’m asking, the wonder of it all (thanks, George Beverly Shea).

Hey, this is fun!