Intentions

I've been wrestling with starting a new blog for a long time, like, for months now. There's been a few things mostly holding me back, which I figure I could list here as my first post. If I can exorcise those things, they shouldn't stand in my way anymore, right?

• How much do I want to share, and with who? I want to write down the things that interest me, and my musings, but also those things that make me angry. So, who gets to read it? Do I want to share with my family and friends, even if what I write here will offend them and cause arguments, resentment, or burn bridges?
  So, then there are three paths.
• Share with those people in my life, via Facebook and other means, but then censor myself so I don't step on certain toes.
• Don't share with those people, be very selective over who gets to read it, or find a whole new audience, but then be able to say whatever I like here. 
• Share and be brutally honest. Deal with the consequences. This is potentially the most painful, but also the most useful type of blogging, right? I'm not sure I'm brave enough for that right now. 
• Do I want to focus the theme of the blog, or go broad? I want to write about so many things right now, and I do believe they are related. Still, I want this blog to be more than just my online intellectual masturbation, I'd like people to follow it and to have it make discussions happen. I want connection though this blog to other people to agree or to argue with.
  From what I've seen, blogs that thrive with readers and connections tend to be focused. I have a friend who writes a blog on modern urban/suburban farming and homesteading, my brother writes a great anecdotal blog on parenting, many friends with art focused blogs. They've all done well in their circles.
  So, what do I want to write about?
• Social issues: I'm a very vocal person about how I think the world SHOULD be. I'll no doubt talk about feminism, racism, economic justice, classism, cultural borders, and many things I think are broken in our society. 
• Education reform: Maybe that's tied directly into social issues. I've got very definite opinions on how our kids should be educated, and about what. I'm less into system wide reform, if only because I haven't looked too deeply into it, than in what goes on in classrooms.
• Barefoot lifestyle: I've been more and more leaving shoes behind. It's a niche little countercultural movement, but it feels natural to me, and yet it's something in my life that gotten a lot of criticism and attention.
• Child raising: My son has been a both a huge influence on my life, and in some ways, a confirmation of how I already saw the world before he was here, so no change at all. I already paid lots of attention to how my friends and family raised their kids, and now with my own, it's like I get to test all my armchair parenting. This is one of the areas that I think will cause the kinds of fights I don't want to get into.
• Lifestyle from the ankles up: Other things about my life and how I should live it, and by extension, how I think other people should live it.
• Confessional: I need a place to dump my internal crap more than ever, and I've never felt like dumping into a confidential journal or diary was helpful. It's like screaming into a pillow. I much prefer screaming into the night sky, so someone can hear the howling. 
• Aspirations: If I don't make public and jot down what I want, they easily fall by the wayside.
• A name for this blog. I think that's settled. I'll have to see if this name sticks. It certainly describes me, but I'm not sure it encapsulates this blog so much. 

Those are the three big things I can think of now. I'm going to read this back later and see how it sits in my stomach.