A blank page is an intimidating thing, more so when it’s the first page of something greater. A single page can easily be crumbled up and thrown away, but a page that is part of a book leaves evidence of its passing when removed.

They say the first step is to write something, write anything. If you’re happy with it, great. Most of the time, you aren’t, and but if you focus on getting to be happy with it, you’ll never get into that place where the words flow effortlessly from your fingers as fast as they come to you mind. Or at least to the place where you can manage to put something down and you don’t erase it moments after.

For me, this has always been a problem initially. I’ve had trouble getting started, getting comfortable with the tone. So, the initial post that will be going up won’t be much more than rambling as I try to warm up a set of skills that I’ve let lie fallow for the last little while.

Prior to this, most of the writing I had been doing was for Erotic Vancouver, trying to contribute to the local alternative community. I’ve written a couple of pieces, and I’ve enjoyed working with them. Hopefully in the future I’ll write more pieces, but while writing for them I am always aware that what I say needs to be acceptable to their brand. This hasn’t been much of an issue in practice, but the idea of that has always added to my anxiety about my writing. It’s that vague gnawing in the back of your mind, that what you’ve written isn’t good enough yet. That it doesn’t convey what you meant it to say, that it’ll be misread and it’ll offend people. That concern is more present when you’re writing about something that has an inherent probability of offending. Many of the articles I’ve wanted to write have been fraught with that feeling.

So, instead of feeling like I’ll damage the reputation of Erotic Vancouver and its spearhead, Reive, I’ve now got this place to write what I think. If I write something I think works for EV, I’ll leave a copy on his virtual desk, and if it doesn’t work there, it’ll go here. And if something I write here works for EV, maybe he’ll ask me to put up an expanded version over there.

I’ve posted some of my ramblings in other places, but this is the first time I’ve made a serious effort to have a place for my ideas, distinct and unique. And I think that’s something that deserves some exploration and perhaps an explanation, though how much can actually be explained, I’m not so sure of.

Over on Erotic Vancouver, I’m known as Ashton, because that’s my name, and I felt that in a Erotic/BDSM/Kink context, Gravedigger might put people off. I wanted people to take my writings seriously, and while there is potentially some risk to my future in having those writings out there under that name, I felt it made more sense than a pseudonym.

Speaking of the pseudonym Gravedigger, it’s one that was given to me about a decade back, and part of a story that I will likely tell here one day when I lack inspiration about something to write up and also feel like I haven’t updated in a bit.

When we lived in smaller social structures, it was easy to be able to perceive who was contributing what to a community. In theory, we would know if someone wasn’t able to pull their own weight and why; since everyone would know if we weren’t pulling our own weight, it would be harder to shirk our duties. As societies expanded, we had more people to keep track of, and instead of tracking individuals, we began tracking groups and cliques within the society. Strategies develop for dealing with this issue, including internal grape vines. Just as societies develop specific individuals tasked with other tasks that would have previously been the shared responsibility of the tribe, a new role develops inside the system, and thus Journalism is born. Initially, the job is simple, to collect and redistribute knowledge so that the society has a better understanding of the things that individuals may understand need fixing, but often have yet to be addressed. The more awareness brought to a problem, the more likely a solution will be developed. As society gets more complicated, and traditional social codes are replaced with laws, these problems potentially have a greater depth and breadth of complexity. The position of journalist becomes one requiring greater skills and one that has greater value to the society. This greater value results in the office being hijacked and converted into pieces of the propaganda engine. Over time, various individuals adjust what it means to be a journalist; how we perceive this embodiment of social conscience. On a grander scale, this social conscience has become less about giving us the truth and more about giving us something to digest, shifting from the role of truth teller to the role of entertainer. There are some individuals who have managed to develop the telling of truthful story into an art, that that is something I greatly respect.