A Life Without...

How I am managing to keep this blog up is beyond me at the moment. I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of revision and other such stressful past-times and for me to be able to continually produce two posts a week is therefore nothing short of a miracle. No, I've not been working every hour of every day (in fact there have been days where I've done nothing) but when I do find some time to get around to blogging I realise I've not been able to spend time thinking about something to write about. Where these words come from is often a mystery to me but, for your continual enjoyment, I shall keep posting until someone tells me to stop - please don't do that anytime soon; I'm having too much fun! The topic for today's post is more of an introduction than a stand alone post. I've been thinking about doing a 'series' of posts on the same theme for a while because that way I really don't have to spend too much time thinking about it before I sit down to write. It means that I'll have a good amount of fuel to go with (for Wednesday posts at least) for a while so that will be nice. The topic for this prospective set of posts is what our lives would be without some of the more fundamental things in our lives. How would we survive without cars? Would the world function without the common umbrella? Would I be able to get things done if there wasn't such a thing as coffee? I'm going to explore these questions in the coming weeks - hopefully I'll spark your brain into gear a little along the way!

As I've already stated, this is nothing more than an introductory post to what promises to be an interesting set of entries. For that reason I'm not going to start talking about any of the ideas I've already had: firstly it means that I'm not treading on my future self's toes and also I might be able to build a bit of thought provoking tension in the lead up to my posts. Something that I'm looking for from you guys is some kind of feedback on the topics that I'm going to chose. I've had people tell me recently (to my dismay) that they were thinking about posting a comment at the bottom of one of my posts but then didn't because they were too embarrassed or because what they were going to write might have been a wrong interpretation of one of my posts. The truth is that anything that gets written at the bottom of my posts is: a) interesting for me and other readers and b) probably smarter than some of the drivel that I sometimes write. The only way that people can learn and, more specifically, learn to think is by looking at what others have written and then respond to it. It's probably one of the only things that ever makes me doubt why I write a blog: I don't get any feedback! Yes I get the occasional comment in conversation but I would love to see what people think about the stuff that I'm writing. These posts that are coming up are a great chance for you to strike my ideas down, agree with them or to pose an alternative point of view - that's the idea anyway.

So in the next couple of weeks keep your eyes peeled for my 'Life Without...' posts because I'm looking forward to writing them which generally means that I'll put a fair amount of effort into them - well more than I usually do! Keeping in mind that you can comment on my posts anonymously, I (and I'm sure your fellow readers) would love to read what you think about the topics.

Thanks for reading today's short introduction (and plea) and I hope to be reading some intellectual responses to my posts in the near future!

Martin