Getting Started

Creating a blog has been an endeavor of mine for years. Longer than I care to admit. However, I never ended up giving it the time to get it up and running.

Here I am now, though. I want to do more writing as a hobby. It'll be about anything that pops up into my head. The structure or style of the blog will likely shift from time to time. I think that's a big reason that held me up. I was too worried on how the blog would look. I just needed something out there and just get the writing started. It also may not be the most polished writing. Sometimes the goal is to just get the thought out there!

I hope that what I post about is interesting and engaging to others. The idea of The Exchange is an actual exchange of ideas and opinions. So when people share my posts on social media or comment on the post itself, I hope that can happen.

There are a lot of conditions to be met, though, for an honest exchange of thoughts. I'll dive into this in other posts since there is a lot to unpack there. A lot of the time, it feels and seems like people get stuck in their way of thinking and react poorly to things that run contrary to it. There are sociological and psychological reasons for this. While I may not always live up to my goal of talking about things in a level-headed manner, that's still my goal even if it is difficult. We all can feel very passionate and intense about a lot of things. But hopefully that passion doesn't prevent us from continuing to think clearly with new information presented to us.

In order to keep challenging myself on this, I'm reminded that learning is a lifelong process. It didn't end with graduating high school or college. It just doesn't end. Seeing new evidence and theories on that evidence should give us pause to re-evaluate how we view the world. Or, at the very least, it is helpful to re-think our position on a particular topic or event. The honest truth with all of this is that learning is a tough process. It's hard to do. But, I feel it's fun to do, and extremely worthwhile.

In the exchange of information that doesn't mean that all evidence has the same weight or that all opinions and perspectives are equal or valid. I certainly will be wrong...a lot. And that is okay! At least, that is okay provided I continue with the follow through on learning and grappling with these ideas.

Anyway, I'm excited to get started with The Exchange!

Erik