What I really care about (confessional 2)

What do I really care about? There's a lengthy answer to that question. And I'm not clear on the details. That's why I decided to start another blog.

This blog is about writing and about academic work. And these are things that I really do care about, especially the parts that are about learning to interact in new ways with your writing, because I have struggled with writer's block myself. This blog has been an integral part of my working on my relationship with writing. Especially important has been learning to be willing to release a piece of work that is imperfect. In the context of blogging, I have allowed myself a great deal of lenience in presenting to the public work that has basically not been edited in any way, and has been often left incomplete.

The result has happily been that I feel much more comfortable writing. For all the mastery I had before, the constant, regular practice has only served to give me greater ease. I'm having so much fun, in fact, that I have been feeling like writing more.

The focus on writing in this blog doesn't address larger issues that I see in the world around me. Its focus guides me away from philosophical speculation and the development of random ideas; it discourages flights of fancy; it discourages questions of morals, and values; it has no place for questions of most everything in the world around. I believe in focus. I believe it's important to keep focus, so this blog is going to stay focused, but there are a lot of things other than writing that I care about.

I invite you to take a look.