...and so it started.

The blog, that inimical wonder of the new Internet life that has swept us all up, now has a little part of myself encapsulated for posterity - should it interest anyone. And so it begins.

Today has been a good day, in that I have got somewhere and done something, and been someone. My kids were fun tonight. Melia - as always - was cute, as was Hannah although she was tired. Well, to be totally honest, most of them were tired, but life is sometimes like that.

Look at me.

The two littlest climbed into our bed last night, a sure-fire way to ensure that I slept all bent up like a paperclip (Do paperclips sleep well? Will we ever know?). So all aching and groaning and muttering I creaked my way into the day.

And what a day. I was on campus today for my Diploma of Arts in Professional Writing and Editing. M was at a seminar-like thing about food and children (and how additives can contribute to asthma and autism and ADHD, and probably a good many other things starting with "A"). Melia and Hannah were at Family Day Care. Josh, Ali, Amber, Alex and Sam were all at school. Getting everyone out the door this morning was as frantic as.......well it was frantic.

I worked on V at school during NOV11, but didn't get far. Sometimes on campus is a great place to get lots done, and other times it isn't. Today it wasn't. After lunch - which I sat typing through - we had EDT12, but as much as I got all of the work done, I don't feel like I got anything of worth done, other than collating a list of all the work I need to do to catch up from both M's and my illnesses. It never ends.

So now I sit here, at home, the kids in bed, M reading about allergies, my computer in front of me with a screen full of work for me to do for NET11. Except, now it is taken up with a screen full of blog. My blog, such as it is. A beginning, a start.

"What are you going to put in this blog?" I ask myself (Not a particularly original question, I admit).

I will try to capture the process.

"What process?!" I ask, exasperated at my own vaguery.

The process, you know, my journey, from here to there......

You will see already that I am not the world's best conversationalist, and there is - unfortunately - no way that this blog can capture my animated gesticulations.

But I will try my best to outline my journey. I am, now, sitting here, a student, and a writer. But am I? Well I am a student, but that in itself indicates a journey, from here to the end of my studies, far off in some distant reality where there will no longer be any assignments due on Friday. I am a writer, in that I write, but I am not a writer in that people walk into the book store and say, "Behold, there lieth that book by that there writer who shall henceforth be known as Ewan D. Harris, and lo, it is published." I am a father, but only as far as I have learned and grown, and there is much more to learn and develop, both for my sake and for the sake of my children. And I am a husband, but I am in an ever-changing relationship with a fragile and special woman.

These journeys will never end, but I am looking towards a rather arbitrary point where I take a step into another phase. I will have ceased being a tertiary student and become a student of life. I will have ceased being a writer unknown and be published. I will have grown as a man, as a father, as a husband, as a person.

I have a long way to go. But I can see that there is a journey to take. Life is not stagnant. Every day is a start, and today is no different. And so my blog has a name.....

Beginnings - a journal.