Friday, September 24, 2010

In the words of Billy Shakespeare...


To blog or not to blog?

This is the dilemma I face as I sit here in my basement, surveying a seemingly unfathomable amount of clothes, attempting to pack for my upcoming year at the London School of Economics. Your likely reaction to these words is one of the biggest reasons holding me back from fully embracing this particularly trendy trend.

“Another travel blog? Shoot me.”

To be sure, I have thought this even as I type. While reading my fellow classmates wonderful travel blogs, I have asked myself what I imagine are the same questions a younger sibling asks themselves as they survey a life their older brothers and sisters have already lived: Will anyone even care when its my turn? What will make my experiences any different from those already experienced? Will I need to drop out of school and join a cult to get any attention?

As a result, I fear that one word comes to mind—or is the result of my thesaurus search—that describes my own prospective travel blog: Trite. Dictionary.com tells me that trite means “overused and consequently of little import; lacking originality or freshness,” and I have no reason to doubt its accuracy. The travel blog has been written before. It's been read before. And its been ignored before.

Yet I have decided—as evidenced by the fact that you are reading my blog post—to throw caution to the wind, ignore the skeptics, and blog. No, I will not deny the likely triteness of my travels. In fact, because this trip is my first time going abroad (and I somehow call myself an SIS major) the level of originality might reach dismally low levels. But in a country that let Ke$ha have multiple top ten hits, I figure triteness can be celebrated.

I am a trite traveler. And this is my blog.