The First Post or Who is Olaf Montelban?

Who is Olaf Montelban indeed? It's complicated. And kind of anticlimactic in the telling. Let's skip it for now. The suspense is better than the knowing.

This is my blog. Or should I say, this is another blog of mine*

Topics will include but not be limited to and not necessarily in this order:

- West Bromwich Albion Football Club

- English Premier League Soccer

- Major League Soccer

- National Women's Soccer League

- International Soccer

- Knitting

- Politics, Democracy, and America

- Spirituality and Faith and Mindfulness

- Religion and Religious identity

- Scripture and the good news of Jesus

- Poetry and despair

- Soccer and despair

- Hope and despair

In general, this blog will be simply my own (representing no person or institution) observations, unqualified opinions, blatherings, hyperbole. All in a sporadically updated blog that no one will read and which I will eventually neglect to the point of utter abandonment to the care of the interwebs. Most good bloggers I know are cooler and smarter than me which breeds occasional resentment on my part, so I'm not going to try too hard.. Also, blogs are a lot of damned work. And I am lazy and easily distracted. And I knit a lot, and that business takes time.

If I tried to condense all the justification for starting this blog and tried to reconcile them with many reasons why not to start a blog it would be this:

This blog is a vain attempt to deconstruct deep seated feelings that I’ve got to be smart, funny, and inoffensive all my waking hours, but instead to be honest and sincere and vulnerable about things for which I care deeply. I’m doing this to break down the cynicism of my own ego—and if you’re reading this, you can easily tell that I need to do this. I’m doing this for myself, to grow in faith and knowledge of God and knowledge of myself. And to talk about soccer. And knitting. And the Bible.

Basically, I started this blog on a whim (see above: vain attempt). I’m not planning on telling anyone about it or advertising it or posting it on social media. If you’ve stumbled onto this blog, that’s really your own problem. Please consider either more constructive ways you might spend your time or the slim possibility that there might be something edifying in my posts. I do pray that I am not a stumbling block to anyone. And I ask that you pray for me.

*this is at least my fourth attempt at blogging. I’m legitimately somewhere between ambivalent to mildly contemptuous of blogging. There’s just a lot out there. I always mean to read blogs, and then I don’t. And also, I generally avoid blogs. So, it’s only fitting that I should start a blog.