Title subject to change without notice.

“Oh no,” you’re thinking, “not another blog from someone who has nothing to say.”

Probably. Most definitely.

During a recent downswing in my translation business, in all the advice I was getting on how to get new (more, better) customers, build my business (back) up, secure steady income, and all sorts of exercises in possibly futile professional soul-searching, one of the common themes was a blog.

“You don’t have a blog? You really need a blog.”

“You should have a blog - get your name out there, get people talking about you.”

In the words of someone very near and dear to me, “Who wants to read what I have to say?”

And though I am 99.999% sure this applies to me, I figured, what the heck. As they say in Holland (loosely translated and adapted to suit my purposes now), “You’ve already got ‘no’, you might just get ‘yes’.”

(The official translation is actually “nothing ventured, nothing gained” but I like mine better, it’s literal and illiterate at the same time.)

So here goes. My first (and possibly last) blog entry.

Who knows where this will go, what I will “blog (still uncomfortable using the verb form)” about, whether any of it will even be related to my profession, or whether I will resort to being a “link paster (after all, there are tons of people out there who have way more to say than me, and can say it much more eloquently)”. I already know that I will probably be posting a lot of photos, complete with clever captions. Or cartoons stolen from other people’s blogs or websites. Although the words “original” and “creative” apply to just about everyone in my family, I was obviously absent the day those genes were handed out.

If it’s any indication, just coming up with a title has proven to be a nearly insurmountable challenge (see title of this entry). What to blog about - well, I’ll cross that rickety bridge when I come to it.

For now, I’ve got “no”. Who knows, I might just get “yes”.