Intro, or why this website exists
I thought about making this blog for a long time before I finally pulled the trigger. Here are some of my thoughts on this decision.
Part 1: Why not to blog
It seems to me that most bloggers blog because they’re desperate to share their thoughts with the world. A brief review of recent “Why I Blog?” articles posted on HackerNews supports this conjecture—among the differing justifications these bloggers give, the common reason that stands out is that they all want to broadcast their ideas to the world. Other reasons they list like clarifying thoughts or creating a personal archive are simply reasons to write and not to blog—these benefits can be secured by writing in private. Since I don’t care about being heard, it seems like journaling might be more my speed.
My hesitation vis a vis blogging goes deeper than just that. I think it also goes against my core tendency to care more about the process of doing things rather than achieving goals. Here’s what I mean when I talk about this tendency: In college, I attended a couple paint nights held by an art club called the Kitchen Sink, but there’s no evidence that this ever happened. This is because I only wanted to train my painting ability, so I would paint random subjects, and then throw my paintings away on the way home. These days, when I’m at work, I feel embarrassed when I have to demo features that I’ve built. I prefer when things quietly go into production with no attention so I can focus on doing the thing. Blogging itself doesn’t go against this tendency, but the process of creating a website and publishing to it reeks of validation/achievement seeking and not writing for writing’s sake.
I also have this idea floating around in my head that creation is purest by itself and that I shouldn’t pollute it by mixing it with non-creative pursuits. It’s kind of an idiotic concept but to illustrate the difference, the act of painting itself is surely creative but hanging up a painting or displaying it in a gallery is probably non-creative. I go so far as grouping the act of completing a painting or any other creative project with non-creative processes because putting on the final touches doesn’t involve ideation. The consequence of this belief is a massive backlog of half-finished essays, drawings, and movies that I have no urgency to complete because I say to myself that I’ve already done the cool creative stuff and of course because these projects aren’t done, I can’t share them with others.
Part 2: On blogging
In the last couple months, I’ve been coming around on the whole blogging thing. For starters, the justification for all my high and mighty ideology about leaving projects unfinished is incredibly weak. The truth is that when people finish their projects, they’re only deciding that they are okay with not working on that particular project any longer. By not getting own projects to a state that I consider “done”, I’m just satisfying myself with making things that I’m not quite happy with and my collection of unfinished stuff is actually just a pile of garbage.
The other mental block I’ve worked through is the way I’ve tied sharing creations to egocentrism in my head. Instead of only seeing sharing creative acts as some form of bragging, I’m starting to see it in the context of communication. I read a great passage by John Dewey in Art as Experience where he says, “Language exists only when it is listened to as well as spoken. The hearer is an indispensable partner. The work of art is complete only as it works in the experience of others than the one who created it.” Dewey’s aesthetic theory totally aligns with the other ways I think about art—my favorite movies and books show some aspect of human experience to people consuming them. If I want to make anything that serves a similar purpose, I will need to orient my creative process towards people other than myself.
A couple recent events have really pushed me to follow through on this mindset shift. About a month ago, I wandered into the Seattle paint shop Art Primo and struck up a conversation with a customer. My hope was that I could meet some people and learn about the scene, and things were going okay until he asked me, “So, are you an artist?” I of course said “No,” to which he replied, “What the fuck.” And this ended the conversation. It’s funny in retrospect but I was really embarrassed at the time; but the lesson from this encounter was that I need to develop some visible identity as a creative person if I wanted other people to engage with me on these things.
Then, after I watched Oppenheimer, I did some additional reading on the Institute for Advanced Study which is where Oppenheimer meets his biggest opp Lewis Strauss. According to Wikipedia, this institute was created so that scientists and researchers could pursue their own interests without worrying about teaching or winning grants. It’s a nice idea, but in that Wikipedia article there’s this great quote from Richard Feynman (Jack Quaid in the movie) slamming the institute:
These poor bastards could now sit and think clearly all by themselves, OK? So they don’t get any ideas for a while: They have every opportunity to do something, and they’re not getting any ideas. […] Nothing happens because there’s not enough real activity and challenge: You’re not in contact with the experimental guys. You don’t have to think how to answer questions from the students. Nothing!
When I read this quote, I thought to myself that in a much shabbier way, my habit of keeping all my work private similarly hinders me from improving and making anything meaningful.
My plan moving forward is to stop quietly jerking myself off about how great and pure my creative process is and actually do real things. I’ll put stuff that I make on this website so if you want to see how this goes, revisit every once in a while, and feel free to re-read this post too if you’d like. God bless America.
