A Brief History of Time (as experienced by Andrew)

I came into this world (where else would I be writing from?) a few days plus twenty-one years ago, in an Southeast Valley hospital. My family moved to sort-of suburban North Phoenix and then to suburban North Phoenix. I attended, in order, Moon Mountain Elementary, Mountain Sky Junior High, and Thunderbird High School. Having grown up in a Catholic household of wavering religious commitment, I almost attended Brophy, which may have either protracted or hastened my spiritual evolution to agnostic belief, then agnostic disbelief, to the happier atheism of my present.

At any rate, I have always held some degree of contempt for groupthink in its myriad forms, from the homogenizing commercials that pass for programming on MTV and pop radio to the all-but-pragmatically useless political binarism in the US, and I continue to nurture this sentiment with an ever-rising level of confidence.

I attend Northern Arizona University, as I have for two and a half years, and here I study English with a minor in Spanish and aspirations of someday combining the two in the fields of education and publication (one of these or both).

My interests, excepting but by no means disregarding the social and functional, include what is referred to in academia as the arts and humanities. Sure, I dabble in tennis a few times a year and I'll almost never say no to an offer to go hiking, but despite the insistence of many that I have a build for it, I've never had much interest in sports. Travel intrigues me a great deal and I would like to do a lot of it in my future, but financial limitations have meant that, so far, I haven't gone very far without my family. I won't expound on the particulars of my tastes here, having already offered a characterstic sample on my profile, but as a general statement, I'll say that I appreciate a text, a film, or a song that challenges my intellect and emotions and/or exudes its creator's genuine love for it. That said, if any aesthetic principle has linked my tastes from this age to that age, it's been a sense of evolution and adaptation. I guess I could rephrase this in less flattering terms by admitting that I'm greedy for understanding of people and certain aspects of the world around me.

I read fitfully but passionately, and since grade school I've been told that I'm a good writer. Since I started college, I've known this was true. Nonetheless, I have long gone against my nature and better judgment by making do without a journal. This is not my first blog, but it is the one I hope to make my first really meaningful one, no matter if it is only meaningful to me. The title is not just the name of a The Knife album and one of my current favorite songs. And my audience is not bound by location, membership, or size. It could be just me and it could be you.
And now, with no room for further excuses of the "how do I start this?" or "my first post should be special" order, I can begin publishing dispatches from Here and Now.

Hey, Andrew! Write something!

Oh, okay.