Fear and Trembling (with apologies to S.K.)

I am about to embark on one of the greatest challenges of my life…Blogging. I face this challenge with great trepidation, but thankfully I’ll have my wife and seven-year-old daughter to help me with the technology aspect of it initially.

Let me explain. Some days I feel like an old man, a dinosaur, a Luddite quite content to live in the moment without any modern machinery. I feel no need to tell all my “friends” what I am eating, thinking, doing on a play-by-play basis. I am “old-fashioned.” I prefer live music instead of digital downloads. I like to construct things made of wood using hand tools. I read books that you open instead of scroll. I have a flip-phone that I seldom use, but Susan insists that I have in case of emergency.

I am also nostalgic. I still enjoy sending postcards, and people find it quaint when they receive them. Last year I sent a postcard to my seventeen-year-old nephew, and he handed it to his mother to read because I wrote it in cursive, despite the fact that by all accounts I have “beautiful handwriting.” Since then I’ve tried to remember to print when writing most of my postcards to people younger than myself.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not a fearful person. I love to travel and am not afraid of taking risks. I’ve ridden a camel and many horses, zip-lined through the jungle, jumped off a 35 foot waterfall, ridden mechanical bulls, climbed a volcano, and even wrestled an alligator. However, I’ve never documented these things beyond a few photographs, so this blog thing will take some getting used to. Bear with me if I don’t post regularly, and don’t think that something horrible has happened if you don’t hear from me. If all else fails, we’ll pretend it’s 1961 and I’ll invite you all to a slideshow at my house when I get back home.