My first day of law school.

That's right. I'm a 1L. And right now I should be reading the contracts book that's open in front of me, in preparation for the class I have in an hour and a half.

"Why on earth would you start a blog on your first day of law school?" you ask. A fair question.

I've decided it's time to go bald. Publicly. And by bald I mean in the dictionary.com sense of the word:

bald

   [bawld] Show IPA

adjective

1.

having little or no hair on the scalp: a bald head; a baldperson.

2.

destitute of some natural growth or covering: a baldmountain.

3.

lacking detail; bare; plain; unadorned: a bald prose style.

4.

open; undisguised: a bald lie.

5.

Zoology . having white on the head: the bald eagle.

Well, mostly definition #4. Open; undisguised, but without the "bald lie" part.

Today is the day that I want to start being publicly honest, and to give myself a forum for being undisguised. I'm doing this today because of the things that define me other than being a 1L.

I'm a woman, a single mother, a nonprofit director, a U.S. citizen, a feminist, an evangelical Christian, and a political liberal. And I have some stuff to say about each of those categories, and a few other categories I haven't yet mentioned.

I come diving headlong into the blogosphere at what is possibly the busiest juncture of my life, in a time of disastrous political polarization, at a point in history where the world is changing rapidly, there is economic uncertainty, and there is much that each of us could wish was other.

Most of us look at the world and want it to be other. Different. New. Better. We despair, and dream, criticize and challenge and castigate, hope and hate. This is my attempt to join that conversation, and to let my voice be marked by reasonable criticism [but not cynicism], rampant idealism [but not fluffiness], and baldness. My life has taken some strange turns, and it's made me into a person who has a variety of perspectives. This will be my place to share them.

Maybe. If anyone wants to read it. But I do think I need to write it.

Starting today.