in which our Heroine boldly enters the Brave New World, despite Great Trepidation

It's a miracle. Many people thought this day would never come, and others persevered in the face of great resistance to ensure that it did. And here we are. Lady Demelza  is online.

Yes, that's really me, completely absorbed in the task of learning how to use blogger. The picture is a little bit blurry because there's actually a frenzy of activity going on in there, despite my sedentary posture. Thanks to Mr CJ for taking the photo. You see, I am terribly technophobic. Partly just because I'm generally pretty old-fashioned, I think. And largely because I have temporal lobe epilepsy, and being around too many computers, or for too long, or even just one computer that just makes the wrong kind of whiney noise, can trigger an epileptic episode. I didn't actually know that this was the problem until I was 25 years old. Before that, all I knew was that 'I had a yucky feeling' about and around computers. I think this is why I developed such a strong aversion to anything involving computers during those formative years when the Internet was the New Thing and all my friends were learning how to do it.

I probably would have lived a lot longer in willful ignorance, but for the insistence of my friend, Dr MJ. He told me I was living in 'information poverty' and took it upon himself to provide me with a modem and a refurbished iMac. Now that's the kind of insistence that is hard to resist.

Several months later I was taking my first tentative steps into the blogosphere, guided by my dear friend the Majik Faerie, who has been keeping a most excellent blog for some time now. Soon enough, I had enough blogs to follow that the blogger dashboard came into my life, and I learned how to make Comments, and follow links, and... and... and... well you know what happened next. I discovered there's a whole world out there, populated by some mighty interesting and talented people.

That would have been good enough for me for quite a while, I think, but the peer pressure would not let me stop there. It has seemed, for some time now, that the unspoken question in every computer-related or -located conversation I have had has been, 'Well, where's your blog?'. And it was a fair enough question. I could already see the events of my life forming blog posts in my mind - but that's where I wanted them to say. There were too many things to worry about with blogging, not to mention the fact that i didn't know a gadget from a widget, and my camera had a film in it. Okay, I still don't know the difference between a gadget and a widget, but I have given up the film camera for good. Thanks again to Dr MJ for the device that points and clicks and plugs in to the computer.

The crunch came when suddenly, mysteriously, quietly and without fanfare, I received a revelation. God wanted me to have a blog. I'm not going to argue with that. Yes, I do whatever God tells me to, no matter how crazy it seems at the time. It works for me.

Oh dear, now I've dropped the G-word, and I must clarify. When I say God, that's more of a shorthand term for Gods/Goddesses/Great Spirit/The I Am/the Universe/(insert name of your preferred deity here).
I'm certainly not referring to the Judeo-Christian god that many people in Western societies first think of when the word 'God' is dropped. Clearly, this is a complex issue that deserves its own posts, and will no doubt get several in the near future. The point that is relevant here is that I now had no excuses and could not hedge any longer. I had to start a blog.

My education in earnest began a little over a week ago when I wanted to copy a long passage I had already written into a different email. I used the copy-and-paste function... for the first time in my adult life! And it worked! This was so magical and dramatic for me that the moment required a Happy Dance.

Then it was off to the library for a copy of Blogging for Dummies, and several dozen emails back and forth to Majik Faerie - messages of the 'okay, i've got x, what do I do next?' variety - and a week of neglecting the housework and having toasted sandwiches or take-away for dinner, and well, here we are. Just me and my 13-year-old iMac, named Cami. Yes, I give a name to all my electrical devices. I was brought up that way.

Welcome, friends, to The Maroon Diaries.  I think the occasion warrants a Happy Dance. C'mon, get up and join me!