Taking the plunge - Sorry!

So here I am, on the brink of a new phase in my life. Am I exaggerating? Most likely, but the fact is that I have been thinking about starting a blog for quite some time already and yet it took until today. Trying to find excuses not to start earlier and getting stuck in trivial stuff like blog design and colour schemes – a nice way of saying that I had to set the right background colour!

But then it hit me like a hammer, the first blog posting is probably the hardest one ever has to write. From here things will get easier by the minute. And therefore it seems best to get on with it.

So, hello world! Like there aren’t enough blog writers around yet, I am going to vent my personal ramblings as well! Please bear with me for a while and see if you like it. As for where this journey will lead me – and you – I have absolutely no clue. Right now I have so many things spinning round in my head and often very strong opinions on basically anything that coherence will not exactly be the keyword of this blog.

So you might find me writing about music, language, fashion, kids, holidays, cultural differences, books, relationships and friendships, and my personal life – to some extent – as a husband and daddy as well. You name something and I most likely will have something to say about it! Well, perhaps I will steer away from politics because this is often a national topic that might not appeal to the enormous and ever growing international crowd of readers that I expect during the months to come! But apart from that I will use my blog as a rather anonymous but really honest platform to really show myself. What you see is what you get, but no, for the time being, I don’t do autographs. Sorry ladies...

Yes, ladies – please let me explain, before I am labeled a male chauvinist pig and this blog is doomed to be banned by all of you. No offence, but I wonder how many men go for autographs altogether? Okay, as a kid you might have found yourself by the side of the football field stalking your favourite player for one, but I think there it stopped for most of us, right?

One more thing I would really like to point out is the fact that another major reason for this blog is to check how good my English actually is. Why? You might have expected as much, but no, I am not a native speaker. I might have reached some near-native level in the past but right now, this might even be too much credit for me. So I would like to see where I stand and how easy – or not – it is for me to write English prose and how naturally it feels.

I share a dream with so many millions of other people around the globe and aspire to be a successful writer at some point in time. But as I am not one to take the easy road, I thought it a fantastic idea to complicate things for myself and not do it in my own native language, (Dutch for those of you who didn’t realize). Isn’t it a splendid idea to start with a disadvantage to all you native speakers around and trying to catch up in the process. Don’t ask me why, but it just feels like the right thing to do. So this blog will serve as a writing exercise for myself as well. So if anyone gets hurt in the process and if me abusing the English language beyond belief might bring tears to your eyes, I am sorry, I am really sorry! But on the other hand, please cherish these words, as I really plan on not using them anymore for a long time.

Sorry and stay tuned!

Today listening to: Boulevard of Broken Dreams - Green Day