Why did I start this blog, you ask? Well...I don’t really know.

But let me try to figure that out with you. For a while now, I’ve always been toying with the idea of starting a blog. I’ve occasionally read other people’s blogs, and I always thought they were a cool way of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings about anything and everything. I as a person am always thinking about anything and everything — during a boring class, in the shower, or while I’m trying to fall asleep — and I’ve found that one of the best ways of expressing my thoughts is through writing. I keep a bunch of journals or diaries or whatever-you-want-to-call-thems where I often express my thoughts and feelings on a variety of subjects. If I want to rant about something that a girl did that just makes no sense to me, that goes into Chapter 4 of a locked Notability note on my iPad called “Top Secret Note. If you aren't Reid then don't open this note without permission from Reid.” (that was part of my very original 7th grade naming skills. Don’t ask). If I want to write a poem about something, that will make it’s way on a Pages document into the “Personal Poems” folder stored locally on my iPad Pro. Or, if I just want to write about my life right now, into the Pages file called “The Subjunctive Book” that will go (again, please don’t ask about the naming). All in all, these are (and have been) great ways of expressing my happiness, excitement, sadness, depression, or whatever whacky feeling I might possess at the time. Yet, there’s something missing about these. All of these are locked in my iPad Pro and, as of now, will stay that way. But I felt it was time that I share some of my other writing with others — and that, my friends, comprises about two-thirds of the reason why I wanted to start a blog, I guess.

My other motivation for starting a blog came 6th period in the courtyard of Great Neck South High School sometime in early June. I was having lunch with my best friend, Nate, and somehow in our sea of conversation of the most random things in the world (seriously, try watching Nate and I have a conversation at some point. You’ll come out of it thinking we’re the weirdest people on earth), the topic of starting a blog came up. We both sympathized with the fact that we’ve always wanted to start a blog and said how we should both work on our own over the summer. We got so excited about it and then five minutes later moved on to joke around about that funny video we watched in our Spanish class or something.

So a few weeks later, on June 18th, 2019, I began creating the website that you are on right now. I started from a blank template on my website creator of choice, RapidWeaver, a Mac exclusive. From the start, I wanted the website to have a very minimalistic design, like something out of Steve Jobs or Jony Ive’s mind. Speaking of Apple, I decided to go with using Avenir Next as my font of choice (a long-time font used by Apple themselves). With this in mind, I began creating the very Apple-like thingy that you can see on the top of this website. The all-lowercase looks like something that Apple would make and the saying on the bottom was inspired by something that Apple would say. Oh, and if you haven’t figured it out already, I am obsessed with Apple. Just come up to my bedroom and look at how I wrote “REID” on the wall using only Apple stickers.

Editing this website

So anyway, back to the blog. After that day, I really didn’t touch the blog until another day in the courtyard of Great Neck South High School in mid September. In the midst of our conversations, I randomly said to Nate, “Hey, what ever happened to the blogs that we were gonna make?” To that he responded, “Oh yeah!” We then started discussing our visions for the blog. After I explained to him in detail how the blog was going to look so nice, be representing of Apple, and how I was going to host it on my own server, Nate was like “yeah I’m just gonna use an old Weebly site I had laying around.” It’s funny how our viewpoints differed on this thing.

Ok, so now I have to mention something important. As you start reading all of my posts, you’re going to realize very quickly that this is not your average blog. I am a very quirky writer, and you will see me break the most elementary writing rules by going off topic (like this), changing my structure midway through, or talking to myself in my writing (yes, I am doing that right now. Like right now. You are literally reading me talk to myself). Since I break these rules on purpose, I think it’s ok; it’s part of my style. I’ll admit, everything that you will read has not been edited at all, as I take pride in creating these works in only one draft. So just be aware of all this. If you find my writing entertaining, go ahead and stick around here. If not, well, the red x on the top left of your browser (or top right if you are on an inferior operating system) works OK too.

Anyway, back to the blog. So that weekend, on September 22nd, 2019, I did some more work on this website and really started to figure this whole thing out. Since I am quite busy, I decided to limit myself to writing one blog post a month. That way, this doesn’t become a hassle and I can still get good grades and get some sleep, as remember, I am still a high school student. That same day I also decided to plan out the next few blog posts so that this website still is a thing after this post. While my original intention was to only plan a few months in advance, I ended up planning a whole year’s worth of posts, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Once I had this blog sort of figured out, I finally made use of reidf.net and published the website that night. And sure enough, one week later, Nate published his first post on http://thecohenblogs.weebly.com/about.html.

So here I am, on October 6th, 2019, writing my first post. After scrolling up on this Pages document that I am writing with my iPad Pro’s Smart Keyboard (it’s such a great keyboard btw), I realized that my original question was to figure out why I decided to write a blog. To be honest, I’m not sure if I really answered that question so clearly, but the real reason why I am writing this blog really comes down to this:

Why not?

Ok, right now, I should probably be studying for AP Physics I, so I should end this. I really enjoyed writing this post and I hope you were informed (and entertained) by it too. I hope you enjoy everything that I will write in the future, and I’ll catch you in the next post.

- Reid

Typing this blog post