Why I am writing a blog

Not long time ago I mentioned to some of you in an email that the primary purpose of having a blog is to offer an alternative view on Afghanistan to friends and relatives back home. Although that's still true, there seems to be a second, very simple reason for writing a blog, too: It seems that I have always been taking notes of my life.

Few days ago, while sitting on my desk in my old room at home, I looked at the shelf at eye height, and what did I see? Dozens of books, whose content covered almost twenty years of my life (it's nearly twenty years ago that I learned how to make use of a pen and a paper). I first started writing a little diary during summer holidays. Due to the lack of a camera, I added my own drawings to it. The things I wrote were of a simple style, such as "today I met my best friend, and we played in the swimmingpool. This was really nice". Or: "today I did rollerskating. This was wonderful".

During the successive years, writing became a bit more sophisticated, and a tool to read and understand my surroundings. Not only did I write what I did, but also what I thought about certain things, what I felt, what I discussed with people. My first kiss for instance marked an emotional outbreak which my writing style had never seen before. Unfortunately, the guy lived far away in Berlin, which eventually forced me to abandon dreams to see him again and instead turn my ambitions towards people in closer reach. With time, my books became less centered around my doings, and more around my thoughts. Much later, observations of the world around me became the focus of my writing.

Sometimes, when reading through the books of the years between my childhood and adulthood, I feel a bit sorry for the people who lived with me. Foremost, I seemed to be - by principle - against everything which was told to me by people around me, regardless of whether they were older or younger, relatives or friends. The only thing I seemed to believe in was the "wisdom" I got from books written by Hesse and Kafka. I also feel a bit sorry for myself when I read my own writings from those times today. How much energy must I have vasted by simply being against everything. How much of these efforts could I have invested slightly more useful things.... But than again, one has to learn her/his own lessons, as a german saying goes. I guess my parents accepted that saying one day and though I didn't acknowledge it by then, they helped me a lot to go through these years of teenage rebellion and eventually find an exit to get out of the "me against the world mood". When I read through the diaries today, I see the lessons which I learned, and I am happy that I learned them.

So, it seems that writing a blog is not simply a mean to provide my relatives and friends with an alternative view upon afghanistan, but simply a continuation of what I have been doing througout my life: taking notes of what I observe and of what I think.