I have not written lately, mostly because I have not found the energy to. Writing is hard for me. Finding the right words and the right way to say things is hard for me. I would often write a sentence, then read it to myself in my head, trying to feel it out. Does it feel natural? rushed? And does the logic flow? Does the semantics match the vibe? A good sentence is born out of a synergy of several things—the pacing, the punctuation, the wording, and the sequence in which those words are strung together. Unfortunately, I do not yet have a natural feel of the English language. So I cannot get those elements right without taking my time to mull over each word. That, naturally, takes a lot of time and is a barrier for me to get words out.
That’s the reason I stopped writing. But, since I am writing this, there has obviously been a change of heart. To know why, you have to understand that I like to generalize things. I like to generalize things. I like to derive general frameworks of how things work from a few examples. If an approach works for solving one problem, I like to distill it down to the core reason it works. I would take that core idea with me, and use it solve every other problem. That was how I learned math in elementary school, middle school, and high school.
We learned math by solving loads of practice problems. By “we”, I mean the typical students. Obviously, I was not part of the bunch. I was better. Being the smartass as I was, I thought drilling over uninteresting problems was beneath me. I thought I could always extract some essential insights just by studying one or two problems carefully. And those insights would service me better than whatever intuition the practitioners drilled into their brains. I was right. My approach worked for math. The trouble was not math.
The trouble was when I applied this approach to everything not math or physics. The trouble was when I developed a relentless emphasis of quality over quantity, and eventually, a hostile attitude towards practice. After all, why should I practice when I did well in exams. I could just divine some insight and they would service me fine. But of course, that didn’t work for writing. There is no essential insight I could glean from Dickens that would transform my writing overnight from disorganized spurts of thoughts to a natural flow of logical. Writing well does not need a profound understanding of the English language. It needs a well tuned linguistic sense. And that kind of intimacy with a language comes only with practice.
So I will write more. Quantity over quality. And that’s the deal about the future of this substack: you will hear from me more. I will talk about my thoughts and experiences, and I will be ruthlessly honest about them. Don’t worry, I have spicy things to say. I won’t bore you with trifles. On the other hand, you will see less of those big title, logically dense treatise that used to characterize this blog. They are tiring to write, and y’all don’t like them anyways! I can see it from the engagement stats.
I am rebranding the blog to Uncharted Thoughts. The rebrand suits two reasons. First, the new name is less cheeky. Second, it is very fitting. You see, I want to blog about things that no one else would. These could be experiences in my life that are unique or thoughts that we all occasionally have but refuse to verbalize. It could also be eccentric philosophical arguments or honest political commentary. What I blog about will indeed be uncharted or at least little-charted I suppose.
Comments will be off. This blog is small, so I feel obliged to reply to every comment. But occasionally, there would be one or two comments...that I would really prefer not to engage with. Anyways, if you want to discuss things, contact me by email or text. I’m always open to that.
Peace