This article is the first step on my journey into the world of journalism, and like any adventurer daring to tread in lands unknown, I feel a bit of apprehension. But with it comes the ever present thrill of “what might be” on this endeavor.

I am reminded of that scene in “Citizen Kane” when Charles Foster Kane, standing pensively at his window staring into the dark, quiet streets of New York City, turns to his editor and demands the front page of his first issue of the Inquirer be reprinted just hours before its release to newsstands — if you haven’t seen Citizen Kane, then shame on you as a breathing human being. He does so with the fervent conviction that his readers should know the principles behind what he reports as the news.

Well, this article is hardly the front page of the Inquirer, and I am hardly Kane; yet, I’d like to take this first installment of mine to lay down some ground rules about what exactly you will hear from me week to week. In a way, this is my opinion of what an opinion should be.

Firstly, I promise to think through my opinions. At home on a little stand next my bed lays a brown leather journal. In it I bleed all kinds of unfiltered thoughts and random notions that fill my mind throughout the day. It serves me as mental trash can.

This column will not be that trash can or an extension of it.

I promise that when I submit an opinion it will have been subject to both meditation and discourse. It will be reasoned through to the best of my ability. I feel somewhat obligated to bring to this paper each week something that stems from more than passing intrigue and emotional upheaval.

A good opinion is more than a transient feeling about a circumstance or, which is worse, a hasty reaction to external pressure. A good opinion is the weapon of the citizen against those who would oppose his intellectual freedom. And so, like a blade, it must be forged and tempered with reason, and sharpened against the grind stone of personal experience.

Secondly, I promise to write with passion. I can hardly justify creative exercise wherein there is no feeling or passion whatsoever. In life it is a man’s passions that propel him to exactitude and excellence. In the case of an opinion column it behooves me to write of the things that are directly connected to my experience, not as a thinker, not as a “college intellectual,” but as a man, of flesh, bone and brain.

A good opinion is rooted as much in a man’s passion as it is in his reason. It must be a conviction to make it worthy of the printed word. It must be a longing for change or a substantiation of that which is, but I promise it will never be idle chatter, and I promise it will never be devoid of feeling.

With these things said, I look forward to writing each week something I hope that all of you will find a bit dramatic, a bit informative, a bit inflammatory and entirely human.