six words to change the world.

Whenever I read a blog that isn’t wildly successful — one that’s started by an average person simply because they wanted to write — I love to see them articulate why they started a blog. Based on my highly scientific research, I’ve found that most people started blogging simply because they wanted to. (A sophisticated observation, I know.) Blogging provides something to do, and it connects you with a larger world. People just want to share a little of themselves, and thanks to the Internet, it’s pretty easy to do that these days. I also think most people secretly (or not so secretly) imagine that their blog will make them ridiculously wealthy and famous and that they can quit their real job and work exclusively in the afternoon, while wearing sweatpants.

Kathleen and I would be lying if we said our motivations weren’t pretty much the same as everyone else’s. Both of us like to write, both of us have a lot of opinions, and both of us love blogs. We’re the ones who truly enjoy a snarky comment on Wonkette, the ones who secretly wish we were Heather and Jessica from Go Fug Yourself, the ones who g-chat each other instantly when there’s a new post on Stuff White People Like. And neither of us would complain if blogging led to a life where we worked from an amazing penthouse apartment in D.C. and pranced around in fancy pajamas drinking gin and tonics in the middle of the day, occasionally pausing to write a mind-blowingly witty and insightful blog entry. Neither of us are actually banking on this happening, but hey, a girl can dream.

So while Kathleen was bored at home, and I was bored temping as a receptionist, we starting g-chatting about blogs. A friend of ours from college had recently started one, and both of us confessed that we had toyed with the idea in the past. While helping each other brainstorm about our own potential blogs, I threw out the idea that we write one together. About 3 seconds later, Kathleen said that she loved the idea, and here we are.

A word about the title of this blog. Right before we graduated from college about a month ago, I discovered a book called Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six Word Memoirs From Writers Famous and Obscure. The idea of the book is to challenge people to pen their own six-word memoirs, a challenge to which my friends and I have become addicted. It’s thrilling to whittle a scenario, or a life, down to only six words. One of my favorite examples from the book is Stephen Colbert’s: “Well, I thought it was funny.” Simply because it’s fun, we wanted to incorporate the idea of the six-word memoir into our fledgling blog. And with a nod to each of our idealistic natures (I’m going into conflict resolution, Kathleen breathes politics), we threw in the “change the world” part. Because we each hope we can, with or without the blog.

[Posted by Mallory]