year

I realized recently its been a year of me having this website. I really haven't written as much or added as much as I have wanted to. I would say I'm surprised at the passing of time, but this stretch of a year feels appropriately long. Which, I think is a positive change. I'm not sure how many people keep up with this website, how far it reaches out into the web, but if somehow you have been, you may have noticed some of my older blogs and writings getting removed. I have this website for myself, and I struggle with writing everything with the expectation of someone reading it and trying to glean a part of me from my written experience, so sometimes I write and it feels like a blockade is up, or a filter. Like if this was truly all to myself, that I would be using different words, saying different things. But I think I'm coming to realize my sense of self is rough around the edges. I'm really figuring myself out, and forming parts of myself anew. With this, I sometimes look back on my older words and feel some kind of disdain, some internal dissonance. This happens I think because I don't appreciate the way I carry myself in my writing, a result of my personal identity crisis.

Anyway, I remove some of my older writings because I think I sound stupid. That's mostly it. I tried to do something or say something, and I ended up failing in some aspect of that. In a way I look back on and really don't appreciate. I think I'm experimenting, at least in retrospect that's what I've been doing. I've been experimenting with different ways to write and express myself through words, to try and find what feels comfortable, what feels like me. What I've realized is that I don't feel like myself when I try to talk sagely or too flowerly, which probably isn't very descriptive. I'm not exactly sure how to word it, or even exactly what I'm trying to word. I also don't like writing too professionally, at least in my personal writings. I don't want to make it feel like a Medium article. I think I'm much more blunt? if that's the right word. Maybe not blunt, but I'd rather be literal than artistic. I think because I'm just not a very good writer, and I can't yet write in a way that I find beautiful. I feel I could be both, I don't want to lay claim to any one "camp" within myself, because clearly the self isn't black and white like that. I guess I want to come off as honest too? I'm not sure. I suppose I don't "write" nearly enough to jump straight into metacognition about how I write.

This sort of makes me question my purpose for starting a blog in the first place. What do I have to write about? What do I WANT to write about? Maybe I should've done more metacognition before I started this. So far I've written a little bit about my life, and mainly putting my thoughts about some things out there, like AI and whatever. I definitely want to keep doing that, keep writing about things I think about. This is probably where a lot of my disdain for my past writings come from. My thoughts change as I go through life, so I feel that whatever I've written before has become outdated. I feel that I could do a better job now, express my thoughts more clearly and in a way that could CONVINCE someone of something, or teach someone something, and have utility in that way. Be useful to the world. The process of writing this little piece right now has been surprisingly exploratory. I'm being meta right now sorry.

The summer is coming up. And with it I have a lot of nothing to do. And that really sucks. Having nothing to do is a dangerous thing, I don't trust myself with this much freetime because such freedom is addictive. Lazing around and doing nothing is so much easier than doing something. If you would believe that. I feel most summer's I've left them feeling disappointed in myself, at least a little bit. So for this next summer, I want to do something, dedicate myself with a project or something. I've also learned my goals can't be vague. So as much as I want to keep the personal goal of "work on your website!" I can't really track that. I sound like a high school counselor with how I'm talking about goal setting right now but that's okay. Some of the things I want to do is some sort of project using a new framework or tool related to programming, something higher level to make an app or something, then I also just want to keep reading. I've been reading more recently but I definitely don't want to stop. If I do it more it'll just be so much easier for me to pick up a book in my freetime and I think that would be a much more valuable use of my time, even if I'm reading for pure enjoyment. (I suppose anything I would want to read should be for enjoyment, but I guess I'm trying to have a healthy mix between reading for purely entertainment and reading to learn something, or just read something different or challenging in some way. I guess thinking about it all of the books I have lined up to read I would get entertainment from reading.) Then I really do want to work on this website, but I'm unsure how to keep track of that. I should make a list of more specific things, maybe certain ideas I have for things I want to write about, maybe reminders to take more photos so I can keep a piece of the natural world in my little digital realm. I feel I could come up with more goals, there are a lot of things I would want to do and I'm interested it. Like what if I get into another hobby. What if I actually spend time doing a hobby I've done in the past and have a sunk cost in. My current goal is to come up with better goals.

It's been a year! I forgot why I was writing this. That's really it. I'll look back at this in 6 months and feel some kind of way about it. Isn't that beautiful? More time.