Mission Statement

For a more serious discussion of my intentions, see my 1st year-in-review post or this shorter site update. It seems that I have evaded any real ‘about’ information here…

—

I want to pre-emptively defend myself against a few common criticisms of blogs, internet comments, and writing more generally. These criticisms might only exist in my imagination, but they still worry me enough to force me to think of an answer.

1) Why write?

I am writing these posts to fill time: half an hour during a work break, an hour before bed when I can’t sleep, a couple hours on a Sunday when I don’t feel like going out. I do not have a clear intellectual goal here. This blog is simply a defense against boredom.

Sooo… I will write when I want to look busy at work because I am too craven to browse reddit on my phone. (I wish I could be so bold to play Runescape in the office…) or when I have grown so sick of anime that I can’t watch any more (if you are sick of it, why then transition to write about it? madness) or when I want to stave off insomnia induced by my computer screen’s blue-light glow (itself induced by writing these very essays… who would have guessed!).

Boredom!

2) Why publish?

If this blog has no goal other than to stave off boredom, why bother publishing it? Wouldn’t a personal journal suffice? First, some people in my life have expressed an interest in reading it. Putting it all in one place makes it easier to disseminate to people important to me. Giving five people a Google Docs link everytime I write a post becomes annoying.

More importantly though, I think publication encourages me to write with a bit more rigor. Now that I have left university, I find that I carry on with the same mindless routine in just about everything. I no longer need to slow down, think, and produce arguments that other people might accept. Sometimes, my job feels mind-numbingly easy. I worry that my thoughts have become a jumble of vague feelings rather than defensible ideas — not that vague feelings are somehow worse than defensible ideas, just I hope to remain in good practice in case I need it.

Publication thus incentivizes me to increase the clarity of my writing and thinking. Instead of simply thinking to myself “that show sucked,” a more formal post forces me to provide an answer to the ever-important question “Why?” (Answer: it sucked because it sucked!)  I imagine that I will fail in this goal because I am just a lazy as the next guy, but hey, might as well set out to try, eh? And then boredom strikes again… the site is something to maintain, like a garden, for someone as otherwise physically and artistically inept as me.