I read John Acuff’s book Start.

I decided to start a blog. I feel lame for doing this. I’m copying him. Too many people have blogs. I know this. But I don’t read any. I have family and friends who write them. And they are good, smart, funny, and valuable.

I’m not sure why I don’t read them. I think it might be that I don’t like the word BLOG. Seriously. I hear it, read it, or write it, and I get an irritated feeling in my stomach. Not a lactose intolerant feeling. More like a feeling you get when you meet someone and for no reason at all that you can identify, you just don’t like them. You try to suppress that feeling. Especiallysince you are a Christian person. What right do you have to just simply not like them?

I don’t like writing that I don’t like someone. I want to like everyone. But I also like openness. Honesty. And not liking someone is not a sin. I hope. Not loving someone is wrong. But not liking them, it seems to me, is optional. Maybe you’re not following me. Whatever. That’s for another day.

Back to the word BLOG.
I’m not kidding. I have this faint feeling like, “who do you think you are? making up a word. combining words web and log (is that correct? is that where the word comes from?) to make B L O G.” There it is again. That feeling.

You ever read Gladwell’s Blink? Basically, he says that our gut feeling is almost always right. Our first instinct. Its a great book. Fun at least. Well, what I am saying is that from the moment I heard BLOG I didn’t like it. And I still don’t. I trust my blink instincts. There’s something not right about BLOG.

There are a few other words or acronyms that became words that make me bothered too. First one to come to mind is SUV. I can’t start on that one. I’ll get way off topic. But I promise, I’ll come back to SUV at some point.

When I decided to start a web log, I had no clue. Of course I looked up “how to start a blog.” ugh. Just searching that made me want to stop. My wife sent me a link. I opened it about three times. I could not read it. The only thing I got from it was when she read some to me. Basically, I could use a free blog site or get my own domain name. To keep it short and readable, I didn’t want to do either one. And basically, I knew I wouldn’t do either one.

So, being brilliant, (and I mean that literally…but I also mean it in a self-effacing way…which is ironic and probably another long tangent), I emailed one of my smart brothers. I have two smart brothers. I’ll write about them often I’m certain. I also have four smart sisters (I literally just stopped, closed my eyes, and counted out slowly while picturing each of my sisters heads so I could be sure I got the number correct…which is why I call them all smart). Three of my sisters are adopted. They are the smartest out of all of us. Sorry other siblings.

That one may sit with them for a while. Considering that our youngest adopted sister has Down Syndrome (I had to google that to see if there was a S on the end or not). But, I’m telling you, she’s smarter than all of us.

Can you stay connected to my line of thinking?

I emailed my smart brother, J.R. Go ahead. Picture him…I know you were anyway. His name is J.R. He lives in Lula, Ga. I think. Maybe it is Baldwin. I’m not sure. With big sprawling cities, its hard to tell where one city starts and the next one ends.

He is not what you picture. Perhaps he will confirm this by inserting a picture of himself. He’s smart enough to do that.

My brother, J.

The reason he would do that, or have access, is because my original point was that I asked him and his wife Kayla to host my blog. I had no answers to their questions. Do you want to have your own website? What format do you want? What is the blog going to be about? What is that smell?

Basically, I am brilliant. I wanted to write things that I thought would be interesting to write. Mr. Acuff told me to start a blog. I didn’t know how to nor did I want to associate with the word BLOG. But that didn’t stop me. I asked my smart brother J.R. to be my organized brother who took my brilliant ideas and put them in a format on the internet that fit his preference. As far as I know, this happened. If not, so what. I’m writing these things down and it feels like a brain massage. I have all these random Seinfeldian thoughts in my head and I just want to get them out. Talking about them is occasionally fun for me and entertaining for others. But more often than not, it makes people feel like they do when they meet someone and for no reason that they can identify, they don’t like them.