I used to teach creative writing to kids. Many times, upon receiving an assignment, students would come up to me, and say, “I’m stuck. I can’t think of the first sentence.”
“That’s all right,” I would say. “Just start with the second sentence.”
And what do you know? Rather than look at me as if I were crazy, they’d trot back to their desk and the words would flow. Somehow, permission to take a running start freed them from the terror of the blank page, from the paralyzing pressure to create the perfect first sentence.
And thus, I, obsessing over what my first post should be, will simply begin with the second.