I’ve been re-evaluating this blog recently. I hate to use the word “blog” to describe this place, but I don’t have a better definition now. I had already provided an explanation for why I need a website and a blog. But it boiled down to a few simplistic things: I love sharing with the world and I find a standalone blog the best way to do it. That stands true. However, today, I want to vastly expand on that. And I won’t be afraid of a ramble. Too many thoughts didn’t make their way here because I am afraid to publish unless the thing I am writing is reviewed and edited a million times and gained the rhythm and structure to my liking. Which is bizarre, considering how much trash this blog contains.
Before we begin, why do I need an explanation? I need a serious talk. Because, without sufficient motivation, without a clearly defined purpose and vision, I may abandon this place or find it difficult to use.
I may someday examine one of my entries, perplexed. What is this? My honest opinion of that time? A piece of art detached from reality? An obscure quote without my any contribution? A harsh parody filled with scorn? A post-ironic piece filled with half-truths and awkward humor to distance myself from something questionable?
Every listed thing has already appeared here. However, this entry is not designed to bring the final clarity for distinguishing between these different kinds. I don’t want to do that. I hope that my common sense will be sufficient to understand the nature of most of my entries. Moreover, sometimes I specifically want to be ambiguous. Still, I have to vaguely define the scope of this blog so it is easier to use.
Even if I won’t understand one of my entries completely, I can be sure it was somehow connected with me and relevant to me. The most common connection is obviously that I liked the thing that I wrote or found it interesting or worthwhile for preservation. Unfortunately, though, I may experience mood swings and regret that something was added the very next day after it was added. But it is important to mention that I try to preserve everything since I believe that even bad, embarrassing, or no longer relevant parts of this blog are still important for objective representation. As time passes by, older entries may lose relevancy or quality in my eyes. As my views and my language change, that is good and expected.
Most of the things that I wrote and should continue to write are my genuine, truthful thoughts and feelings. Most of these are easy to spot since they have the form of a more elaborate discussion with a discreet and open-minded nature. Such as this exact text. It can be put in contrast with shorter entries with daring claims that might provoke an emotional response or have a more aesthetic value. Still, the more metaphoric and artistic entries that I may have carefully crafted, crudely and hastily jumbled together, or plainly copied from somewhere else without indicating the original author — are all as well most likely resonated with me in one way or another.
I do, however, reserve the right to add absolutely anything, including irrelevant nonsense, mischievous disinformation, and ugly lies.
As it has probably become apparent, I need this blog for my own use. If I survive another 20 or more years (fingers crossed), I will most definitely forget what I was like back in the day. I know this because I can already have difficulties recalling some particular details of what has happened just recently. Of course, just like other humans, I do remember a lot of different things. But even those memories are fragmented and prone to change. Some studies show that our memories are rewritten every time we replay them. For additional context, I will also include a quote from what I wrote recently:
“I feel that my mind may alter my memories depending on the current situation. For example, if a man turns out to be a vile individual, I may think, “Yes, I always hated that guy.” But if he turns out to be falsely accused by his vile opponents, I may suppose I always liked him. That’s one of the reasons why I find it worthwhile to take notes and etch in stone my present opinions on various topics.”
Now that I somewhat defined the content, let’s define the volume. Let’s imagine that many years in the future I would want to know what I thought and how I felt during the time when the country of my origin was invaded by its degenerate neighbors. I would want to cover a period of a few years in a few evenings. Much more than that would discourage me or create difficulties with time allocation. Much less than that would prevent me from getting a good-quality picture. This information density roughly equates to writing 100 words a day. For comparison, this exact sentence has twenty words, so five of these sentences per day is all that I need. It would be nice to keep this number in mind, but I will definitely not try to strictly adhere to it. One, ultimately, my satisfaction is the priority. I will lean to writing as often as I like and as much as I like. Two, functioning as my memory is not the sole purpose of this blog.
My current job implies working with a lot of text. And I estimate that I will have to write more in the future. I enjoy working with languages (more or less), and it’s not too hard for my brain. It is quite possible that my entire career will revolve around this domain. If so, I better start getting good at it. Even though my current skills are good enough to get the job done, I know how awful I am. It would be nice to have a place like this, where I can practice more and feel no pressure to follow the rules. Though I have to admit, my current most serious problem, a bottleneck, is not the lack of skills but rather my habits or biology. I have difficulties concentrating for prolonged periods of time. I may, for example, start fighting the brain fog 5 minutes into the action. I may begin to feel annoyed, bored, or tired 20 minutes into the action. After that, I may feel the need for a long break, which may in turn become unnecessarily foolishly long.
Take this entry, for example. I hoped to complete it in the span of one evening and one day from a weekend, during which I had no other priorities. I failed miserably. One week passed, each day of which I tried to finish writing this text. I didn’t measure the exact time, but I feel that cumulatively I spent between 6 and 11 hours of pure work to finish it.
All of this is humiliating to describe. I feel that this place can benefit from more well-deserved humiliation. Humble honesty will allow me (and potentially other people) to have a more profound understanding of myself and the world around me. At the same time, the feeling of embarrassment may well become the leading cause for the desire to fully terminate the blog. I have to strike a balance.
Overall, I want to work on my speed by using a combined approach. The bottom line is, even if I won’t use this blog in the future, writing here is beneficial for me short and medium-term. I get to practice a target language, improve my attitude, adjust my habits, heal my noisy, wandering brain.
The next thing that I need to cover is the necessity of this place being publicly accessible. There are benefits to it, which I will describe in a moment, but ultimately this blog simply would not be possible without being public. I have tried to keep several private journals of different kinds, but none of them survived for long. Gradually they lost quality, while I was losing interest and motivation.
I love that I am rather independent in thoughts and actions. But the reality is that I am still strongly affected by an external observer. Especially when it comes to acting responsibly. For example, I may fail to force myself to clean the house unless someone is going to visit me. But that’s okay. I am happy to abuse this my quirk of an intrinsically social animal to my own advantage.
When it comes to writing, some magic happens when I imagine the judgemental gaze of the reader. It doesn’t matter much who that might be. I won’t even necessarily want them to like it. Some things are written to be disliked and disagreed with. Nonetheless, in these conditions, the written thing becomes a finished product. That is something I failed to consistently achieve with my private journals. They were becoming a mess. I was starting to throw in mere keywords, thinking: “I will likely recall what I meant here,” “I will make it into a proper entry later when I am in the mood,” “This is good enough for me,” “What is the point of it all?”
There is, of course, a downside to a more responsibly maintained blog. It demands more time and energy. I still tend to have a place where I can quickly put the keywords for different ideas, thoughts, and experiences that I wish to properly express on paper someday later. There is more I wish to share than I do share here. And for some reason, I’ve been struggling to keep pace lately.
