What is this?

A while back, more than a decade ago (god), I had a friend who recommended blogging as a tool for thinking. Back then I was just getting started with graduate work in cognitive science (something I was new to) and was dealing with insecurity around whether I'd be able to cope etc.

Life has changed, the degree got done in good time, I found I could mostly keep up with everyone around me (although, I also had the good fortune of meeting people who were way, way smarter than me - something everyone should experience as often as possible - more on this later, I'm sure) -- but I dropped the blog when I left my home country (South Africa) for my adopted one (New Zealand).

I more or less got rid of all public channels of communication at that point - all social media, my blog, stopped doing philosophy, and stopped writing fiction.


There were a few reasons for it, but mostly I think I realized that I didn't want to have to deal with the (imagined) pressure of putting myself out in the world publicly.


I've kept to myself these last five or six years. It has been good, in some ways - but in others I feel I've lost something. I used to have greater ambitions. I could articulate them, make plans. These days I find it difficult to even give an outline to something that looks like an ambition.


Maybe that's good. I think ambition for ambition's sake is probably toxic. But I don't think that I'm doing all that I could be doing, and that makes me a little disappointed.


So part of resurrecting this blog (which shares its name with my old blog) is to try and set right some of the issues I'm dealing with -- try actually do something in the real world that has consequence, if only a teensy tiny bit.


What does that look like, exactly?


I'm not sure. But let me make a list of things that I'm kinda interested in, and we can go from there.


  • I would like to write and submit a philosophy paper
    • I really, really miss doing philosophy, and although I no longer have any ambition of becoming a professional philosopher and academic (something I held as my ultimate goal for a long, long time), I don't see my life as being complete without doing some kind of philosophical thinking and work.
  • Write and submit some more fiction.
    • I think it's about time for this. I miss writing, despite finding it one of the most challenging things I've ever done.
  • Contribute to open source software
  • Read important books, report back on them
  • Delve deeper into contemplative practices, report back on this

 

I suppose that the point is really to record thinking. But why out in public?

I'm not sure. It may be stupid, but what I'm doing right now isn't working. So I'm trying a different approach.

Further, actually having a record of what I've been doing or thinking might be useful, if only for me. 

Blog or it never happened.

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