The most conventional way to start anything would be by uttering, writing, or otherwise expressing some sort of greetings. Typically people wave, or say a simple hello, or even just smile at whoever they're trying to greet. I therefore, would like to greet you: hello, and welcome to my blog - netherether - where I tell my stories.
Now is about the time where I explain a bit about myself, or perhaps, a bit about my blog and reasons I find myself writing to you today. You see, I've always been fascinated by stories, anecdotes, tales, legends, fables, or anything that can be spoken or written. People fascinate me, and our stories (at least in my opinion) are what make us human. Each and every one of us has a story we like to share with someone when we first meet them, or maybe we have a story we've told countless times. I don't know about you, but I must have heard my parents' "go-to" stories about a thousand times by now, and yes, the stories are getting a bit dry.
Life is about stories. Life is full of stories, and like I've already mentioned, those stories help define us. It would be a shame if those stories were to never reach an audience, or never shared, explored, and elaborated on. You see, life is about expression, and without a medium to express one's stories, what's the point in living them? We crave social approval, a hat tip, a friendly nod, a chuckle - most people need these things to feel accepted, validated, or even to feel belonging. Simply put, we need to share our stories. The world is our audience.
This all occurred to me several days ago after pondering the last couple years of my life. If we were to rewind back about a year, I'd be on an island, and you'd probably be... errr... somewhere else. I spent a couple years of my life island hopping around Micronesia serving as clergy for my church. I was adamant about keeping a clear, concise, relatively humorous journal where my stories would be stored. I wrote the journal half for myself, half for someone in the future. The life lessons those 6 books contain will hopefully benefit my posterity, or someone else in the future. But what if I hadn't written those books? Where would those memories sit? They'd be gone. Poof. As I reflected on my past self, I realized quite quickly that I'd lost touch with my inner story teller. I made excuses like "life is too mundane now that I'm not living on an island", or "I just don't have the time." Both of which are lies. Life is exactly what you want to to be as our perspectives and attitudes alter our realities.
So what am I trying to say here? Well, life is a book meant to be written, and you're the author. Unfortunately, lots of us get writer's cramp, or writer's block, and we don't write for a while. We allow life to be lived, but never recorded. And while it's important that we experience things and live in the moment, we must also remember the importance of documenting our day to day insanity.
I have stories to tell. There are people I want to describe, places and things I've seen, events I have opinion on, and while I could keep all those stored internally, the world is not served by us making ourselves small. We fear our light, not our darkness.
My dream is that this blog will serve as a place where we can laugh, cry, and feel vicarious embarrassment together. Sure, everyday isn't going to be a Hollywood movie, but everyday will be a unique experience. We're going to try to blog every single day for a year. Yes, it's been done before, but not by me. So here we go...
What is "NetherEther"? Well, if I'm to be honest, it was really hard to pick a name. In fact, I perused several different name generating websites before finally using my own imagination to produce NetherEther.
Nether: Lower in position
Ether: The clear skies, the upper regions of air beyond the clouds.
I think that Nether Ether is "The lower part of heaven". You can quote me on that. This probably sounds overly philosophical, or perhaps even outlandish, but my idea is that a lower part of heaven is reachable, whereas pure ether isn't.
We're here on earth to find our own heaven, to try and obtain an incomparable pure happiness. Plus, if you pronounce "ether" incorrectly, then "NetherEther" flows quite nicely. Ha!
Until tomorrow,
Brady
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